Footprints Left in the Sand
by quartknee88
Summary: Before crafting his son Gaara into Sunagakure's perfect weapon, the Fourth Kazekage had tried to seal Shukaku into another child first. The failed sealing should have erased that lifeless soul from the world forever; instead, it opened the doors for a fresh one to tumble in from another world. And she had no idea what was waiting for her on the other side of death. OC/SI
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: I don't own the Naruto series.

* * *

Clouds began to filter in the skies above Sunagakure, the Village Hidden in the Sand, and its ironclad leader, the Fourth Kazekage, watched them from his office window with a wary but hopeful gaze. It didn't rain often in Suna, and Rasa took the impending shower to mean that things would be looking up soon; that he made the right choice.

With the downpour of rain would come his vessel for Suna's one and only bijuu, Shukaku. The deadly tailed beast was due to be transferred to another human host, and to his disappointment, neither his daughter Temari nor his son Kankuro had been deemed viable candidates for being the next jinchuuriki. Rasa was relentlessly determined not to relegate the fate onto his final child.

When he found out Karura was expecting, his best dream and his worst nightmare had both been realized. She was hesitant about considering their son as the next jinchuuriki host, but in the end was willing to put forth the good of the village before that of her own and her son's. _Their_ son's.

Rasa wouldn't have it. Not this time. He would find another way.

And he did. It was due to be delivered in the form of a small newborn fresh of the womb not more than three days prior. It would be raised as though it were a member of his own family, thus cementing its loyalty to the village and to him. After all, why waste a precious Suna life when other villages had so many to spare?

A speeding form dashing through the village gates pulled him out of his cogitations, and he smiled briefly, thinking of the good he had done for his family and his village. _Finally_ , he thought, _something that will bring Sunagakure out of the shifting sands and into the light again_.

He ordered his secretary to send word of the incoming quarry to his trusted senior advisor and the only shinobi in the village who was adept enough at the sealing arts for this monstrous task, Chiyo-baasama. She would be the blacksmith crafting his village's newest and strongest weapon, and he knew she would not fail him.

He stalked out of his office, descending like a raging sandstorm toward the basement room of the tower where the sealing process would take place. He flung the door open, and found the former puppetress, along with a number of other ninja he assumed were her picks of the top sealing experts in the village, in the middle of painting ornate seals across the room.

Hunched over on the ground, she paused in her work briefly to turn her head in his direction. "You're late, Rasa," she croaked.

He sneered, and walked up to the examination table, where the newborn had been strapped down and where presumably all the seals around the room would meet at a close.

"Actually, it seems I'm right on time," he countered.

She scoffed, and continued her seal work. "It won't be much longer. We're almost finished here."

He nodded, and turned his attention to Suna's future jinchuuriki. His future weapon, he thought in his mind.

The child was small, sleeping soundly despite the chaos that would soon enter its life. The smallest tufts of dark chocolate brown dotted the crown of its head, a rich olive shade covered its soft baby skin, and black irises peeked out from its eyelids with the occasional flutter of blinks.

"It's a girl, in case you were wondering," Chiyo offered.

Rasa considered that statement. It made no difference to him either way, because his village had produced exemplary ninja regardless of their sex assigned at birth. Its finest examples were in the very room he stood in.

Of course, Kumo's success with Yugito Nii, their female jinchuuriki host of the two-tailed beast, was promising. He knew Suna would raise the child resting on the table before him to be just as strong, if not more cunning and merciless. He had no doubts about the success of his jinchuuriki, his weapon.

At long last, Chiyo and her subordinates reached the table holding the newborn, and she took over to complete the marks leading to the child's upper hip. With painstaking accuracy, she painted what he presumed to be the final sealing mechanism that would jail Shukaku to this child. She stood briefly, wiped her brow, and called an order to her subordinates.

They ran out of the room upon her call, and returned momentarily, carrying a large tea kettle.

 _The tea kettle of Bunpuku_ , Rasa recognized, _the very first host of the One-Tail_.

The subordinates heaved the tea kettle parallel to the table, placing the puppet mistress physically in the middle of the current clay container of Shukaku and its future human container.

Rasa became stern-faced, and turned to Chiyo, awaiting her approval to begin.

She nodded, and uttered to everyone in the room, "We will begin. Move out of the way of the procedure, or you will find yourself caught in a seal with no return to the mortal world."

Rasa stepped back from the operating table until his back made contact with the cool earthen walls of the room.

Chiyo opened the lid of the tea kettle, and placed her left hand into it. Rasa could tell by the twitching of her arm that it latched onto something within, which he presumed to be Shukaku itself. The entire arm glowed green as she channeled chakra into it.

He recalled Chiyo's description of the process. She would act as the conduit for the transfer from the tea kettle to the child, and since she would ensure that the bijuu would never be permanently in her body all at one time, she was spared the deadly effects of bijuu extraction. Rasa had given her one last chance at devising a different method for the sealing, should the operation go wrong, but she was adamant in her decision.

 _"Suna needs this, Rasa. And so do you."_

She wasn't wrong.

Chiyo began to channel chakra into her right hand, the one on the small girl with chocolate hair, giving indication that the transfer was starting.

Almost instantly, the child's eyes burst open and she began to wail. The subordinates immediately restrained her, holding her down and coaxing her into submission. She continued to struggle, and Chiyo's face clenched.

"Hold that child down, or else we'll have more problems than a released bijuu!"

The threat hung in the air, and Rasa watched as one of her subordinates pushed some kind of fluid into the child's IV, artificially inducing some semblance of calm in her. But her black eyes were wide open now, and though her body was as still as stone, her eyes darted back and forth in fear.

 _Not just in fear_ , Rasa thought morosely, _in pain._

Chiyo continued the transfer for quite some time, her frame evidencing more fatigue with each minute. Rasa grew worried, but Chiyo cackled at his apparently misplaced concern with as much immovable grace as she could.

"Boy, you worry unnecessarily. There's a reason I specialize in an art that requires the utmost chakra control," she rattled out in shallow breaths.

Rasa acknowledged her reassurance hesitantly, but he wasn't fully convinced until the chakra glow on her left arm diminished and she lifted it out of the tea kettle. She pushed one final burst of chakra into her right hand and twisted it clockwise, locking the seal and thus the fate of the child.

She takes a huge breath out, and Rasa literally sees the weight being lifted off her shoulders.

The subordinates fluttered away, taking care of what he assumed were diagnostic tests and other important medical exams. Chiyo cracks a vivacious smile at him, as though she hadn't just spent the past four hours sealing a monster into an infant, and he returns it. He walked over to the center of the room where his weapon was newly shaped, and reaches out to stroke the child's head.

"Is that sentiment I see forming on your face, Rasa?" Chiyo teased.

Rasa couldn't help whatever emotion his face was forming. He truly, utterly, entirely felt that Suna was on its way to its former glory. He had nobody to thank but his trusted senior advisor and the child lying before him, the latter of which was whimpering as though dealt a huge pain, but loosening as though relieved it was over.

"We will name her Sunari," he declared, "after the land she has been tasked to protect with her life."

Unbeknownst to the observers in the room, the soul of "Sunari", the child stolen from a faraway land, would already be dead before she even started.


	2. Chapter 1: Life Anew

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

* * *

A gentle breeze wafted through the placid air of Sunagakure. It was just past sunset, and darkness began to overtake the outlines of still life in the village. The ninja were beginning to settle in, their chakra signatures tucking in at the end of a long day.

Sunari woke with a jolt. Her breathing was ragged, and her mind was racing a million miles a second.

 _Just another bad dream_ , she thought to herself, _nothing a little water can't fix. It's over now_.

She reached over to her bedside table with her left hand, where she knew her water bottle would be waiting. Except...there was no bedside table. And she couldn't move her left arm. And she _couldn't_. _See_.

Her mind sped even faster. What in the fuck was going on?

She tried to move her entire body, finding that she could only wiggle, if even at all. The ground was sandy and cold beneath her, and the air felt clammy. She screamed for help, but all that came out was babbling and gibberish. Confused out of her mind, she kept trying to shout for assistance in English, and attempted switching to Cantonese when she found herself in the same predicament. Nothing escaped her lips but wah's and mah's.

Sunari realized in that moment that she was in a fuck ton of trouble, and there was possibly no way out.

 _Maybe it's just a bad dream_ , she thought to herself as she tried to feel her body. She had difficulty controlling her limbs, which she thought was maybe because of sleep paralysis or some other odd thing. Or maybe she was still in a dream-

That dream...one in which she watched the last vestiges of life leave her body from an omniscient perspective. She couldn't remember what had happened or how it happened, but she recalled enough to know that it did happen.

She had blinked away tears in that dream, for she hadn't had a chance to say goodbye to her family and friends, and opened her eyes to find herself in her current predicament.

An uncomfortable thought was crawling in the back of her mind that there was an uncanny relationship between these two events.

And the sensations throughout her body! It was like she consumed a thousand chiles and her navel was on fire. Then it felt like a hurricane was storming through her veins and gusted past her pores into the air around her. It took what felt like hours, countless painful hours, for that sensation to leave her body and for her entire being to finally slump like a stone, heavy and emptied of some unnatural burden that didn't belong in her body.

Her cries were softer now. The initial shock being over, she tried to calmly sift through the information she had available to her and figure out what the hell was going on.

Language, movement, and sensory functions incapacitated. An odd sensation of something foreign in her body. Death in a dream, waking to an inability to interact with the surrounding world.

 _Fuck no…_

Almost immediately, Sunari sensed a presence approaching. She didn't know how she was capable of such nonsense when she _lost all sensory capabilities_ , but she felt it walking toward her, almost warily.

Yet it felt...comforting. If she was a fire that turned into a hurricane, the presence was a warm light that sheltered you from the darkness of the world.

That was good, right?

The presence _picked her up_ and carried her in her arms. It craned Sunari's head over what she assumed to be its shoulder, placing one hand on her bottom to support her weight and one hand on her back to rub calmingly.

It whispered words in a foreign language, one that Sunari recognized with a dawning fear to be some form of Japanese. But though she couldn't understand the meaning of the words, she could grasp their intentions.

 _Hush little baby, don't say a word. Mama's gonna buy you the whole wide world._

Well, maybe not those exact words, but that presence might as well have said them, the way it was intoning softly and sweetly for Sunari to calm down. Its voice sounded like that of a woman, someone who had a lot of experience with crying children.

Then the presence shifted, and started walking. To where or what purpose, she did not know.

All Sunari knew was that she was reborn a baby again. Whether she was in the same time period she had lived in or not, she didn't know. An unnatural but powerful force flowed through her veins, and she didn't think it had any place in the world she came from. Maybe they spoke Japanese in this new one, but she had doubts that she was in the Japan she knew.

She didn't know who she was in this world, how she came to become a newborn baby cast away in a lonely cold place, or why the universe gave her a second chance. All she knew was that her old life was gone, and she either had to find her way back to it, or settle into this one. She had to begin anew.

Tears slid down her face as she wept softly, mourning her former life that was no more.

* * *

Michi knew something was wrong the moment she felt that chakra flare in the alleyway up ahead. Ruffling her long sandy blonde hair and reaching her hand back to tug impulsively at the knot of her Suna headband, she narrowed her lavender eyes.

She was just returning from reporting the results of her latest mission to the Kazekage-successful even at age 33, thank you very much-and was walking home when suddenly it burst into life.

It was suffocating. The Killing Intent was so unfiltered, so unadulterated, so _pure_ , and it was steps away from the Kazekage's doorstep.

Her slender frame shivered, but years of training as a kunoichi saved her from freezing up entirely as she shook aside her fear.

She moved swiftly toward the source of the threat, and leapt into the alleyway, throwing all caution out the door.

What she found was nothing short of surprising.

A tiny baby, one that couldn't have been born more than a week ago. And it was _exuding_ Killing Intent like it was a demon from the depths of Hell.

The alleyway felt like it was in flames. A not-so-unreasonable amount of fear crept along her body like tendrils, and she froze in place.

Then it was like a gust of wind had blown through the alley, clearing out that fire and raging torrentially at everything in its path. Dust flicked up from the ground, and debris flew around uncontrollably in the air. The dumpster to the side of the child clanged in protest, and as Michi looked toward the child with chocolate brown hair, she saw in its black unseeing eyes devastation and destruction.

Suddenly, the hurricane stopped cold in its tracks. Michi felt a heavy, oppressive weight fall over her surroundings, before it slowly trickled out of life.

The child was so small, so fragile. It began to lose steam in its agitations, and its chakra coils were slowly shutting down, one by one. Almost as quickly as it erupted, the child's chakra had simmered, and it looked no different from any other newborn, bundled tightly in blankets and tuckered out from a wild fit.

She approached the child cautiously.

Her fear left her body with every step. She knew what followed a baby's crying fit - the newborn wouldn't be making any ruckus anymore.

She reached out for the child with her hands, and gingerly carried it on her front. She cradled its small head over her shoulder, and began to soothe it in the way that she as a longtime orphanage mother knew how.

"Hush little baby, don't say a word. Michi's gonna buy you the whole wide world," she sung softly.

The baby grew calmer by the second. Michi couldn't help but feel warmth growing in her heart for this little demon child. Even though she knew-saw with her own two eyes even-how dangerous this child could be, she wanted to love it.

She did already love it.

(Plus, having a child she could train to defend her home and orphanage family wouldn't hurt anybody.)

She inspected the baby and its blankets for identifying information, in an attempt to confirm that the baby she held in her arms was indeed an orphan she could claim as one of her own. She found nothing but an odd marking on its left hip, and a hospital wristband that read, "Name: Sunari, Sex: Female, Date Of Birth: July 14, Weight: 2.8 kilos, Parentage: Unknown."

Michi knew nothing of how this child came to be in Sunagakure.

She knew nothing of how Rasa, the man she spoke to not minutes before, ordered the child's kidnapping for the sake of his village and his family.

She knew not how the child tormented its Suna caretakers within four days of becoming the container for the One-Tailed Beast, and how its originally asserted compatibility was pronounced a failure.

She knew not how Chiyo went to great lengths, nearly at the cost of her own life, to re-extract Shukaku from the infant and seal it into Karura's belly, into the Kazekage's third child.

She knew nothing of Rasa's severe dismay at the passage of these events, and of how he nearly killed the girl she held in her arms out of spite and anger.

She knew not of Rasa's subsequent mercy for the child, and of his pained regret as he rested it gently in the alleyway by his tower to let it die in peace, as was the fate of all jinchuuriki separated from their bijuu.

She knew nothing of how this child should have been long past dead, how the soul within it slipped through a gateway between universes and gave life to a form that should have been still, _had_ been still for a split second as the original spirit took its exit and another was granted entrance.

Michi knew very little, but she knew that this child was special, so very, very special. She decided then that her Kazekage didn't need to know about this one; Sunari was _hers_ , all hers.

She smiled, and looked down at the child she found nestled in the sand with affection in her gaze. She turned, and started walking in the direction of her orphanage at the other end of the village by the gate.

"Sunari it is. I will keep you safe, and you will keep us safe."


	3. Chapter 2: Welcome to Round 2

Disclaimer: I don't own the Naruto series.

* * *

For the second time in this short life span, Sunari woke up with a start. She was still agitated, but considerably more at ease than she was the last time she was conscious.

Her vision was blurry, but she could at least see vague shapes and colors now. That was a grand improvement from the day before. Even sounds and smell were beginning to flood her senses.

The sloshing of something wet and clumpy being poured into a bowl, and the inviting smell of congee mixed with green onions and eggs registered in her mind.

 _Congee._

Sure, Sunari was distraught about being _reincarnated_ and shit, and she could definitely feel an existential crisis or two on the way, but she could give that up for a few minutes to enjoy a familiar dish that reminded her of home.

 _Home…_

She shoved _that_ depressing thought in the deepest crevice of her mind, and instead focused all her energy on the food she knew was heading her way. She loved food very much.

She sensed the comforting woman-presence coming closer with the congee, and started to salivate in anticipation.

And _wow_ if it isn't that weird sensation coming in hot again. She didn't notice it at first, but now after becoming fully awake, she could feel it literally coursing through her veins. She couldn't figure out if she was hopped up on adrenaline or if that strange woman pushed some kind of drug into her system, but she would investigate as soon as she—

The smell wafted closer, and Sunari's mind grew blank at the recognition of it. _Not right now,_ she thought, _now was dinner time._

Or breakfast, or lunch. She didn't know, or care.

Sunari babbled and tried to figure out where she was in relation to the food. The sky blue padding beneath her was soft, and she could just barely make out what looked like wooden bars in a rectangular formation around her.

 _A crib. I'm in a crib_ , she thought sourly, _of course I'm in a damn crib. I'm a baby._

She tried sitting up, but failed embarrassingly. She had to think hard about what muscles were required for motion, having taken those automatic movements for granted in her past life. It was a push up with her arms behind her, a flexing of the abdominal muscles to pull her upward, and a grounding in the legs laying flat to keep her from pushing too far forward and flopping on her face. A three-step process, not too complicated. She could do this.

 _One, two, three!_

After seven failed attempts, Sunari finally found herself sitting upright and was practically glowing with pride.

 _Great job, you sat up,_ the pessimist in her snarked.

 _At least you finally did something!_ the optimist shot back in defense, _your body isn't a useless sack of dough after all._

Sunari came out of her thoughts when she smelled the congee above her and the presence hovering to her left.

 _"Hello, Sunari-chan,"_ the woman hummed slowly in Japanese. Sunari blinked, and understood only because of the bare simplicity of the greeting.

 _Sunari? Is that my name here?_

She saw pale blonde topping the head of the person before her, flowing down in light waves to the middle of her back. A black kitchen apron covered the front of a simple cream frock dress that looked like it covered her arms and nearly touched the ground.

 _"My name is Michi_ ," the voice continued in the language Sunari presumed to be Japanese.

 _Michi! The woman had a name!_

It's too bad that the only Japanese Sunari took from her past life was literally only greetings and random bits from anime, because Michi started saying a bunch of other things in Japanese that she really had no ability nor interest to decipher. Sunari was starting to grow impatient, so she picked up her sausage arms and waved them in the air, hoping to convey her desire.

Michi laughed, and Sunari saw in the next moment a spoon perched in front of her face. She opened her mouth hungrily and leaned forward to gobble the congee, not even waiting for Michi to feed her.

If she had the dexterity to feed herself, she would have gestured for Michi to drop that bowl of congee in the crib right then and there. But of course, she probably had no such ability and couldn't be expected to do much but be fed.

Speaking of which...she was also wondering exactly who Michi was. Michi had blonde hair and didn't look _that_ old... Was she supposed to be someone Sunari called "mother," or was this just some random stranger? Sunari did wake up on some sandy cold ground, after all, and had no recollection of the birthing process.

But maybe that was for the best.

After the bowl of congee was finished (and Sunari's belly subsequently full), she sought to answer her questions.

She attempted conversation, which was really a poor choice considering that the languages she knew might not even exist in this world, and that more importantly _she was a fucking baby_.

After rotating through countless sounds and warbles, she managed out two important syllables that she knew would be recognized anywhere: "ma ma?"

Sunari could feel Michi—or rather, whatever it was in Michi's body that made her seem like an illuminating ray of comfort—jump in surprise. Then she watched through her blurred vision as Michi's internal framework filled with some mixture of happiness and sadness at the same time. Michi picked her by her sides and carried her out of the crib, walking around what Sunari presumed to be Michi's house.

Michi started saying some more incomprehensible things, but by the tone of her voice Sunari could tell that Michi was denying that proclamation.

 _Guess not_ , Sunari sighed in her head.

Michi indeed took her around the house, and Sunari came to find that Michi's house was _huge_. Or was she just small? Either way, there were a lot of rooms and a lot of little cribs and beds. There were at least two stories—no, just two stories—and a large open room that the staircase opened to on the bottom floor. The walls varied in color, but the shades weren't as vibrant as she would have expected.

(Because in this odd world that Sunari was beginning to suspect was not the one she came from, she was able to detect color as a newborn and not clarity.)

Some of the beds looked like they were worn and torn too, some bunked, some single. None of them appeared to be larger than a twin. What looked like small toys and stuffed animals littered the floors.

Sunari could detect faint traces of movement at Michi's waist level in every room they entered, and Sunari assumed they must be children.

 _Well, someone got busy._

As Michi covered more and more parts of the house, Sunari quashed that thought. As a matter of fact, there was no way they were Michi's blood children, because there were too many damn kids in this house for her to have birthed all of them. Maybe she adopted them all or something, but even that was a wild notion because literally, the number of kids in the place could have filled a small school. Plus, Michi had confessed to not being her birth mother anyway, so why would they have been for the rest of them?

They were all so loud and whiny. Sunari heard each of them before she felt their presence. They weren't like Michi's warm light; some of them were burning like the fire in her own navel, others were sharp as a knife, and some she realized were tainted by the darkness of abandonment.

 _That gloomy feeling...this place..._

There was one child in particular who Michi had stopped to speak to, and who stood out among the rest. This little human presence, who couldn't have been older than four, was steadfast like a pillar, and Sunari could practically see the firmness of its will in its stance. She had to squint her eyes to ascertain its physical appearance (a small difficulty in itself, since muscle control was still not something she had mastered in her two days of consciousness), but she made out maroon spikes of short hair parted to the left, crowning a khaki beige face with amber eyes and a scowl on its lips.

He was different from the other kids, somehow. It was the fiery winds gusting in her veins; he had that too. Everyone did. Even Michi had a bunch, though Sunari could tell she was trying to hide it. Maybe she thought Sunari would be afraid of it?

But this boy... well, to put it simply, his was like an unmoving mountain range that moved for _no one_. If she focused hard enough, it felt almost like... like gravity was pushing an unwanted strain on his body, and he had to carry it without complaint every day.

Sunari understood to be his name to be Takuma, as his face alight with recognition upon utterance of that word. She heard her own name passed in conversation, and the boy Takuma in front of her grunted in acceptance. She supposed Michi invoked something like an introduction was made between Sunari and Takuma.

Then Michi gently passed Sunari to Takuma to hold, and what the hell? She was going to trust this four-year-old _kid_ to carry Sunari safely?

Sunari felt waves of nervousness leaking from the boy, and she found herself awkwardly held in the air by Takuma's stiff-ass hands under her armpits.

Sunari shook her body in protest, letting both Takuma and Michi know that this wasn't okay. Takuma, in shock and confusion, then reacted by doing the worst possible thing one could do while holding a newborn baby.

He let go.

 _Fuck, already?_ Sunari lamented, _well, too bad I couldn't have_ —

In an incredible feat of speed and agility that a normal person shouldn't have possessed, Michi snatched Sunari from midair and placed her back on her front where she belonged. Sunari's eyes widened, and from the corner of her periphery she saw Takuma mutter a guilty, wide-eyed apology before turning around to run swiftly away.

Well, at least he was somewhat sorry. Sunari could have died.

Again.

Michi patted Sunari on her back and cradled her back and forth, as though she might have been distressed by the fall. It makes sense. A normal baby would have been terrified.

She wasn't sure how to feel about that near-death experience actually, because she distinctly recalled a misplaced feeling of indifference toward the loss of her life in the milliseconds she was free falling to the ground. But really, all she was feeling now was a tiny bit of adrenaline (shooting _parallel to_ those flames flowing through her body, of all places), and maybe that she might need to burp soon. Shit, should she be crying?!

What a great way to start life.

But right around then, a feeling of sleepiness and exhaustion filled her small, slightly shaken frame. Michi's ministrations weren't helping that; in fact, they were lulling her straight into that relaxed and dreamlike state.

Sunari's consciousness slowly crept away, and her eyelids fluttered closed. Once more, she was encased by darkness.

* * *

The next few months had been oddly...pedestrian. In fact, the most exciting thing that had happened in Sunari's entire life thus far was that little episode she had with Takuma. Sunari's introduction to Michi's home and family had felt like an eternity, but Sunari knew that was only because her new sense of time was relative to the number of days, yes days, she had lived in this world. She put off trying to figure out where she was for the time being, because her profound interest in consciously experiencing what it felt like to be a baby had overtaken any guilt she had from essentially losing her loved ones and any sadness from entering an unknown world without any bearing on reality.

It also made passing those long ass days much, much easier.

As those days passed, Sunari came to an unspoken understanding of what kind of role Michi played in this society. Michi was someone who cared for children without parents of their own, that much Sunari knew for sure. She also learned that Michi fed the children in something like a factory line fashion, indicating that there was something systematic about the way she cared for them.

She even noticed (through that ever-present sensation constricting the inner workings of her body) that every now and then, one or two of the kids would leave after a stranger entered their home, and never return. She knew this because of how when these things happened, afterward she couldn't feel Kato-san and his babbling brook, or Sayuri-chan's floral petals drifting in the wind anymore.

Sunari figured out, without speaking the language or seeing the children, that she was in an orphanage and that Michi was their caretaker.

 _What a way to begin,_ she had joked heartlessly to herself.

More importantly though, she was floored with how quickly she picked up the Japanese language. With her already developed understanding of language functions and the flexibility of learning that being a baby offered her, she found herself rattling off partial sentences by month three.

(Not that she was all that accurate about time. It wasn't like she was etching marks in one of the walls outside her crib with Michi's pen when they weren't looking or anything like that.)

She wished they spoke more languages here, because damn she was soaking up the vocabulary and the grammar like a sponge. Rosetta Stone, her ass. Her broken Cantonese could have improved so much with this rebirth!

Sunari talked with her peers. Well, with the older kids, not really with the other babies. Every time one of them passed by her crib, she pst'ed at them to catch their attention, then asked them to let her out of the crib. Their eyes widened at the confusion of hearing a _baby_ speak, as marginally comprehensible as that speech ended up being, and then darted out as though fearing retribution for having heard it in the first place. They left her, and made extremely concerted efforts to avoid the crib as much as possible.

 _"Oi, oi! Yeah you. Help please? Stuck crib, want to walk, but Michi-san not let me. Can you help, take me out of...wait no, come back!"_

The orphan boy ran like the floor caught on flames.

Sunari sat on her ass and pouted.

She saw some of Takuma sometimes, too. She figured that he was something like a role model to the other orphans, because they started coming back _only_ after he came around to say hello.

Well, all he really did was check in to make sure she didn't choke on her own spit when Michi couldn't. But it was the thought that counts.

Speaking of which, Sunari also "conversed" with Michi whenever she got a chance, and honestly the orphanage mother was a godsend. No matter what Sunari said to her, Michi never showed surprise or concern on their face. If anything, it was pride that flooded her being.

Sunari could tell, because every time she held a decent conversation with Michi, that light inside her quasi-mother burned brighter.

A decent conversation for Sunari, by the way, consisted of at least five or more lines of speech from her before Michi sheepishly tousled the back of her head and left to "take care of the other kids."

...Okay yeah, maybe Michi was getting weirded out by her too.

But nevertheless, Michi started reading to her, and Sunari began to pick up the written language too. At least, whatever she could pull from the countless children's books that she was given.

By month four, she was pulling off simple, _actual_ conversations with Michi and the older kids who had gotten used to her strangeness. Michi let her copy characters with a pen and some random scraps of newspaper, and had some of the other orphans continue to speak with her too. Even better, they actually _liked_ hanging around her.

(At some point, Sunari realized that at their age, enticing the kids with extra snacks guilted away from Michi was the best way to earn their trust.)

All in all, Sunari was pretty pleased with her progress by the end of that month. She understood most of what the children and Michi were saying, even if she couldn't always reciprocate, and she was content with the way her new life was going. She didn't even feel the fiery gusty feeling in her veins that much anymore. She could get pretty far here, wherever she was. She didn't even think once about what her old life had been like.

At month five, when Sunari gained her full vision, all of those good vibes capsized like a sailboat caught in a tsunami.

* * *

 **A/N:** Thanks to everyone who has followed and/or favorited so far! This is my first fanfic, so reviews or PMs about what's good and what isn't would be super appreciated! Hopefully this has been interesting for y'all to read and makes sense so far. First few chapters will be introduction to the main players of Sunari's early life, first (second?) appearance of canon characters coming shortly thereafter.


	4. Chapter 3: Clarity in a Nightmare

**A/N:** Thank you thank you chello baby, calcu22, Moonacre BunBun, and Evanelle for the kind reviews, and thank you to everyone else who has followed and favorited! You have warmed my heart and I hope to continue producing content you will enjoy.

Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto, Johnny Nash, or Spiderman.

CW: panic-like symptoms

* * *

Sunari opened her eyes, and noticed cracks on the ceiling above her. _That's not very safe_ , she grumbled silently.

She pulled herself up and rubbed her eyes, balling her hands into fists and pushing away the sleep of the night. The barely padded sheets below her didn't seem as comfortable as they usually did, and her stuffed bear, with its flattened belly and dulled button eyes, looked smushed as though someone had slept on it all night.

Sunari surveyed the room drowsily, and thought it was a little odd the door to her shared room was open. Usually, it was closed shut whenever she woke up. Had it always been so cracked and creaky?

She hummed, and caught sight of the beds in the large room she and some of the other orphans shared. Even more odd was that said orphans were not lying in them. In fact, if she squinted hard enough, she could discern piles of dirty clothes on each of the beds in place of the children who usually wore them.

 _Whatever._

Sunari closed her eyes and started singing softly. On most days, she started her mornings humming some songs of her past life until someone realized she was awake and got Michi to feed her. She wasn't about that whole "crying for mama" piece though. She knew that would fuck with Michi's sleep schedule, and she wasn't a little shit. She wasn't going to make Michi's job harder just for the sake of indulging in some impulsive baby nonsense.

"I can see clearly now the rain is gone..." she whispered faintly.

Maybe the kids just had to go to the bathroom, all at the same time, and were fighting for it.

She didn't spot any clamor by the hallway though, and the bathroom light didn't _look_ like it was on or anything—

 _Wait._

Sunari's eyes burst open.

She could see. She could actually _see_! Fully, wholly, entirely.

 _Finally_.

She'd be lying if she said vision wasn't the sense she relied on most in her past life. Even having her glasses off bugged her immensely; she needed 20/20 vision back then or else she just wouldn't leave the house. It nagged at her daily in this new place too, and she anxiously awaited the day she would finally get to see again.

It was worth it.

Sunari drank in the scene as the input from her final sensory function came flooding in. The room really was empty of little orphan twerps, but the details composing it were much clearer. The walls looked like they were built of clay and painted over with a mix of subdued pastels, which made her think that maybe there used to be images of springtime and sunshine surrounding the space. Judging by the food rations and the skeletal frames of the other orphans, though, she thought maybe those images were a bit older than she would have liked.

There were a total of fourteen bunk beds in this room, laid out in two rows that were mostly straightened out. But where were the kids sleeping in them?

She continued her visual observations of her surroundings and glanced around her own crib. It was...well to be honest, it was a glorified wood crate with bedding haphazardly shoved inside. Her snacks "gifted" by Michi crowded the back end of her crib, appearing to be hidden away by blankets and pillows. But with her new clarity, she could tell just how obvious they were, poking out of not-so-random spots on her crib.

She face-palmed herself mentally. Just when she thought she finally outsmarted everyone.

External to her direct living space, Sunari saw that her little abode was actually nestled at the center of an alcove crafted in the shape of a half circle above her. It was located directly opposite the door across the wide room, which led into the hallway with the bathrooms and the other rooms. Her crib sat in the middle of the nook built into the walls, and above her head was a ceiling with innumerable cracks that really just shouted _safety hazard_ , if she ever saw one. She knew that there was a window there too that completed the closed end of the nook, because she felt sunlight warm her body during the daytime, and on clear days she could make out a faint glimpse of the moon.

But actually seeing it? She never felt happier to see sheer _glass_ in her life.

The window was a little smaller than she would have liked though, and actually looked a little like one of those circular submarine windows. But she'd take what she could get.

Otherwise, _wow_ , the day was off to such a great start. She finally had all five senses back to her, the kids didn't bug her to wake her up, and she wasn't hungry yet—

Speaking of, where are the little brats and why haven't they come back yet?

Luckily, Sunari once managed to sneak the brooding Takuma a gracious piece of melonpan while he did his routine check-in, and in exchange he showed her how to get out of her crib on her own. Well, as best as you _could_ show a baby with underdeveloped vision.

She reached up one of the front corners of the crib and tugged at a screw to loosen it from its hold. She crawled to the other side and did the same, and suddenly the side of the crib facing the door fell forward.

She was free.

She crawled out onto the textured clay landing of the raised alcove that her crib sat on, and peered down to the ground below it. It was a pretty far drop...

Fuck it. She clambered to the edge, and turned around to place her hands as holds over the edge. She slowly lowered herself down to the floor, and released her grip when she couldn't go down any further. She didn't fall in a straight drop and _definitely_ didn't let out a yelp of pain when ass met grass, nope. It didn't happen.

After having successfully escaped, Sunari padded on all fours toward the door. With that weird adrenaline sensation that she called her "Spidey senses," she could tell that everyone was downstairs. Michi's warmth, Takuma's steadfast footing. Her curiosity was getting the better of her, and she crawled out to the hallway toward the stairs as quickly as a five-month-old could to join everyone in the excitement.

She should have known better.

* * *

Michi ruffled her blonde locks as she waited in anticipation in the expanse of the living room that doubly served as a welcome area for her orphanage, her eyes glued to the door as though someone would burst in any moment. She had all the kids wake up early and get dressed in their best clothes in preparation, which weren't much by the way, because her orphanage was underfunded and she could hardly afford to feed them three meals a day as it was.

That's why it was tantamount that they impressed their expected visitor.

Michi hated catering to the rich of Suna. Like the Wind Country daimyo himself, they considered the shinobi population of Suna too weak to care for them. As a result, they hardly interacted with the ninja, even less frequently hiring them for missions. On top of the daimyo outsourcing missions to blasted _Konoha_ of all places, the lack of finances entering Suna's economy took its hit. Severely.

They entered an economic depression not too long after the end of the Third Shinobi World War. That war was...

Michi wouldn't go there. No, not today. Today, she had a client to impress.

Ryutsu Hisato wasn't the most pleasant of men, nor was he the most kind. He had an obnoxious way of interacting with people, and a tone of voice that was even more disagreeable.

His finances, on the other hand, were something Michi would tolerate a daylong conversation for.

Hisato inherited quite a large sum of money from his parents, who had owned a company crucial to the village's survival, something like Suna's water filtration system or other. Michi wasn't 100% sure where his money came from, but she was certain that she needed some of it to keep her kids alive.

Fortunately for Michi, Hisato and his partner were having difficulties with...fertility. To put it plain and simple, he couldn't knock her up. And she wanted a kid, badly. Hisato gave in, and contacted Michi about possible adoptees.

She initially recognized his Ryutsu family name from the water distribution buildings scattered throughout the village, and knew instantly that this was a man who could save her orphanage. In their first conversation, she dropped a subtle hint that her kids, bright minds as they were, couldn't join the Ninja Academy or the civilian equivalent because they couldn't afford school materials.

Hisato hummed, and mentioned even more subtly that he might be able to help with that, if she could help him.

And that brought her to the present day, where she had all of her kids slap on their best smiles and act on their best behavior. She wouldn't pretend that they could hide the rowdy bunch of twerps that they were at heart, but for an hour of observation, she hoped they would do their best.

They probably would though, judging by their behavior from the night before. At dinner, when she informed them about a patron with money who could make life just a little bit easier, she saw the moment they realized exactly what that meant, as they smacked their mouths shut in unison and listened intently to her instruction for behavior and dress.

Today, as her gaze spanned the room, she saw nothing but the happiest children, ages ranged from 2-15, with smiles so wide they could reflect the hot Suna sun and split it in two.

She was a proud orphanage mother in that moment.

But she couldn't ignore how her heart was divided too. On one hand, she was desperately hoping her dearest Takuma would take Hisato's attention. The boy had so much potential as a ninja, skillfully wielding the fearsome Puppet Master Jutsu, and he deserved better chances than life raised at a small, underfunded orphanage. Even at age 4, his puppets looked like they were crafted at chunin level, and the kitchen blades he finagled into his favorite child-size puppet held a mild threat to those within its range.

And she knew he felt an undue obligation to take care of everyone in the orphanage. She felt the slightest bit of guilt about that. After all, she was the one who told him she wasn't always going to be able to watch over them, but she _could_ train him to be a shinobi...

On the other hand, she needed protection. Being so close to the village entrance meant that her home would be one of the first casualties if an invasion ever fell upon Suna, and her kids needed more than just her chunin behind to keep them safe. Takuma could easily provide that, if she trained him the right way.

Of course, she also had a new backup candidate for "orphanage protector," the only child in her household who wasn't downstairs with the rest of them.

Sunari.

Sunari was the one she couldn't let go. Having found her essentially at birth, Michi imprinted on the child like _she_ was the duckling following whatever being she saw first. She fell in love with the girl, even if she had been scared out of her mind by the wild Killing Intent and demonic energy reverberating from Sunari's body when she found her burrowed in the sand.

With even more confidence than she held for Takuma, Michi knew Sunari would be strong. Stronger than herself, even. There was something about her chakra that filled her with such terror, such foreboding, such _fear_ that she knew Sunari would be an intimidating presence in the world.

That was why she kept Sunari upstairs, instead of waking her. She wanted no chance of Hisato claiming her for his own; Sunari was her ward, her daughter, her protector, and she would never let her go.

The bells to the front door clanged gently, stirring Michi from her thoughts. She stood a little straighter, and noticed the same action being paralleled by the children scattered across the room.

She took a deep breath in, closed her eyes, and swallowed her worry. She breathed out, and reopened her lavender eyes.

It was showtime.

* * *

Sunari landed not-so-gracefully on the 42nd step down the staircase when the complaint came to her mind, yet again, of why there wasn't a damn elevator in this building. Of course she knew she _could_ have been in a medieval era or some time period before the invention of said elevators, but really, didn't it make more sense in reincarnation tales to start a new life immediately after the end of the previous?

Plus, what did they do here when there were people like Sunari who couldn't easily get up or down the stairs?

She shook her head disapprovingly at the situation, but continued making her way down the steps. She knew she was probably already missing part of whatever big thing was happening, since she could sense an unfamiliar presence enter their front door. It felt like a showy jingle of gold coins and an unreasonable amount of scorn.

 _Great_ , Sunari surmised, _the local bourgeoisie has arrived._

Whatever, then it was even better that she was late to the party. Sunari never got along super well with the rich anyway. At least, she hadn't five months ago, before this whole reincarnation thing.

When she finally made it down the full staircase, she looked around for a mop of pale sandy blonde in the heights above her. The kids were all definitely down here, but what the hell were they doing in such nice clothes? Where did they even get those clothes? Sunari never saw them befor—

She made eye contact with Michi, whose eyes widened with surprise in response. Sunari smiled, and before Michi could say or do anything, she exclaimed, "Michi-sama! Michi-sama, look! I can see everything now!" Sunari gestured to her eyes, and then pointed to Michi, "your hair is so pretty, but I like your eyes even more!"

Michi, to Sunari's great disappointment, looked like she was crumpling in on herself.

Sunari felt her smile start to fall, in tandem with Michi's deepening frown.

It was then she realized that all eyes in the room were trained on her. Including the unfamiliar presence, which was making its way closer and closer to her.

Sunari felt Michi's warm light get agitated, and looked all around the room for any indication of what was going to happen. She tried seeking out Takuma, but all she could see and feel from him were waves of mixed envy and unease.

Wha?

The presence stood before her, peering down at her small ass self. It wasn't so much that he looked, but rather that he _radiated_ wealth; with disgustingly slicked black hair and the cleanest clothes she'd ever seen in the past four months, the man was the epitome of "what money can really buy you."

He smiled disturbingly, and to her (and Michi's) dismay, picked her up.

She was really scared now. She couldn't hide that fact, not even for Michi's sake. A strange, threatening, gross man had his hands on her body and she didn't consent to any of this and oh god why was this happening—

All of her thoughts halted to a disturbing standstill when she saw a symbol embroidered on the man's sleeve.

One little symbol, which shouldn't have been more than a small indication of what he did or where he worked.

But it said everything to Sunari.

A simple black outline of a gourd, with a rectangle embroidered above it like a lid. A symbol.

The _Sunagakure_ symbol. The _ninja symbol_ for the _Village Hidden in the Sand_. In the _Naruto_ _universe_ , a place that existed in the pages of manga books and who knows how many anime episodes.

A place that she shouldn't have been _living in_ for the past five months.

 _That existential crisis sounds really good right about now..._

"Well little cutie, what's your name? You look like a pretty little darling my wife would love to take care of."

It blew in like a hurricane.

The full-body shaking came first. It always came first. Then the shudders from deep inside her core, which translated into tears trickling down her eyes. God, it was going to hurt in the morning. Her heart started palpitating, and her hands felt numb. Her breathing was hit next, and she couldn't stop the hyperventilating that came to compensate for the panic that was beginning to take her over.

Then, she wailed.

No, she _screamed_. She pushed, she kicked, she shoved. She didn't care who this man was, whether she hit him or not, or why she was specifically the only one not invited to this shindig. She had a feeling she knew the answer to all three anyway, but she still didn't care.

Fire burned in her veins, and for the second time ever she felt it leak from her body like some kind of porous gas.

But that didn't matter, not at all. Because somehow, she reincarnated into the Naruto world, and to make things worse, she fell into _Suna_ , a merciless death trap in the middle of a lifeless desert.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck. _fuck_.

She sensed fear from that man, and god damn did feel bitterly satisfying. He was shocked, and let her go like she was on fire.

In that moment, she _was_ fire.

She fully expected to die this time, because no way in hell would she survive a second fall, especially when the height differential between Takuma and the strange man had to be at least two or three feet.

Sunari started numbing herself to the blazing pain. If she was going to be completely honest, she had already been doing that for the past four months and called it "acclimation" to make herself feel better. No one was the wiser, because no one knew it hurt in the first place.

In a brief moment of lucidity during her free fall, she sensed the man back away slowly, turning his head toward Michi, mumbling some words out of fear, and stumbled out the front doors. A faint sense of gratifying vindication flowed through her body.

But that niggling apathy came back. And this time, she was prepared. She was ready for darkness, a fatal end, the eminent demise, _whatever_.

It never came.

She was vaguely aware that someone caught her just before her body collided on the cold earthen floor. She assumed it was Michi, and closed her eyes. She'd find out later that it was actually Takuma who managed to dash over and save her from what he himself had been perpetrator of just a few months before.

None of that mattered right now though. Now, she was fire, and hurricanes, and numb, and hurt, all at once. She stopped screaming out loud, but the voice inside her head kept howling on and on.

For the second time in this short life, her body felt emptied of something. But this time, an unbearable burden was left in its wake, filling her to the brim.

* * *

 **A/N:** How do they say...ah yes. Cat's out of the bag.


	5. Chapter 4: Plans in the Making

**A/N:** Thank you calcu22, May525, soul of the kitsune, and NatNicole for the reviews! Thank you new followers and favoriters. I'm sorry it took so long for the update, just had a ton of deadlines to meet for my thesis this past week. But hey I'm almost done now, so yay!

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto! Sadboiz.

* * *

Sunari peered out the porthole window of her nook, and halfheartedly watched as the late afternoon sunset overtook the world below her. A gentle breeze blew in, tousling the boyish clumps of deep brown topping her head and dusting sand gently on her tawny cheeks.

The orphanage, she learned, stood in a relatively busy part of town. There were _always_ people passing through. There had to have been a marketplace or something nearby, because the jittery buzz of people bargaining away at the same time every day was becoming a constant trademark of her steadily progressing life. She was starting to get annoyed by it, because recently she couldn't stop _feeling_ that buzzing and whirring.

Those Spidey senses? It's like they kept getting stronger and stronger, and the stronger they got, the more they constricted her. If she had to describe the feeling, it would be like having the veins and arteries that made her _human_ become twisted, clogged, flooded, and squeezed by some extra essence that made her _inhuman_ , all at once.

And yes, she figured out what that extra essence really was. Not Spidey senses, not some weird sixth sense, but it was _chakra_. Chakra, a distinguishing characteristic of all people born into the Naruto universe, that, when used the right way, could transform a person into a god.

And she felt it, _all the time_.

Because whether she liked it or not, she was stuck in the Naruto world, and some lousy benevolent being or whatever decided it would be a Really Funny Joke™ to drop her down there like she got an extra life in a video game.

Well, technically Kishimoto might be that "benevolent being." But Sunari was fairly certain he did not write whoever the hell she was into the original series. That, or she was _so_ minor that she didn't even deserve on-screen time.

Speaking of that, whoever the hell named her had to have been a _bleeding_ nationalist. "Sand girl"? Come on.

(Somewhere in the Kazekage Tower, Rasa sneezed.)

Honestly though, being a minor character sounded like _such_ a better option. In as unobtrusively of a way as she could manage, Sunari wanted to make a point to avoid the Plot at all costs. She was not touching it, not going near it, not even _breathing_ the same space as any of the canon characters involved in it.

She wouldn't admit it to anyone who asked, but she was scared as _fuck_ of the butterfly effect.

She knew this world would end up okay, if all went according to plan. Yeah, people would die and some rabbit lady in the moon would try to literally suck everyone's life energy into a tree, but all that was eventually justified because of the longlasting peace that came afterward.

…aaaaand low key because the main character got a billion power-ups that literally happened in the span of like three days, but hey, Sunari couldn't complain.

And yeah, maybe when he had a kid or two, shit would hit the fan again. But that would be _after_ everyone got years of peace and never-before-seen worldwide cooperation.

But the point is, this story had a happy ending. Even if everyone had to go through traumatic shit to get through it all alive (because they'd literally be dead if they didn't), the main players made it out okay.

And for all that she enjoyed playing RPGs, she was terrified of making one wrong move that would cost this world everything.

Kishimoto was merciless, and whether he did or didn't play a part in crafting the world around her, his original plot had so many building blocks and meticulously-timed encounters that literally just her existence could have ruined all of it.

No, instead of butting in, she would take on a different societal problem present in this world. Knowledge about proper mental health care was _so_ outdated, she didn't even know what they did to take care of the ninja who came in traumatized after every mission. The answer: probably nothing.

PTSD and a buttload of other illnesses were most _definitely_ a thing in this world, and even though she hadn't made it far enough in her other life to get an official degree to treat them, she planned to bust her ass out in this one to make sure there was some working semblance of mental health care set up here. Because these ninja, these _people_? They deserved better. They _needed_ better.

So maybe she wouldn't save lives by killing off the baddies, but she could save the lives of the ones who did. She couldn't keep them safe on the battlefields, but she _could_ keep them safe from the darkest shades of their minds.

She just had to make sure she didn't treat any of the canon stars.

It was a good thing she was in Suna, then. The Plot never swung around these parts of the world unless Naruto needed some kind of character or jutsu development, and she could probably train a more well-established ninja to treat the Kazekage and his family.

God knows Gaara needed psychotherapy, _horrendously_.

Still, she couldn't believe how she hadn't figured out her universal exchange before that calamitous encounter with Hisato. She kept berating herself for it, because she literally got a copy of the local Suna newspaper every single day for her writing exercises. Michi always gave her full sheets so she could practice as much as she wanted to, but somehow she never noticed the mentions of Sunagakure, the Fourth Kazekage, or just straight up _ninja._

She shifted her gaze downward at the latest sheet Michi had left by her little nook. She grasped it in her hand, scanning it with her stormy black orbs.

"Fourth Kazekage declares truce with Iwagakure; shinobi uneasy but hopeful"

At least after all of that happened, she was able to pick up on the fact that she had a steady supply of news coming in each day to reground herself, one that she's certain Michi didn't realize she was actually absorbing for information gathering purposes.

With that, she was able to establish the general time frame that she had been dumped into. Sunari was definitely in a period after the Third Shinobi World War, which she informally deemed "that time when Madara's insidious plots sucker punched everybody and turned Obito into a little shit." She wasn't sure if Gaara had been born yet or not, but if he hadn't already, well...he'd be on the way soon.

And once he did, she would _absolutely_ stay indoors after dark. Forget not messing with the plot; she just straight up did not want to die a bloody death by sand.

She was roused from thoughts about a small boy betrayed by his uncle when someone suddenly appeared by her nook and grabbed her attention.

"Sunari-chan! How are you feeling today?" Michi chirped cheerfully.

Internally, she rolled her eyes. She loved Michi, but honestly the woman had to get off her back about her reactions to what happened last week.

She specifically did _not_ think about how she was feeling, because the answer was that she felt like shit. Like the world pulled a rug from underneath her, and she fell into a long and cataclysmic hole into some new universe with no way of getting home. Like she was overwhelmed by guilt and sorrow and regret because she would never see her parents, her brother, her friends ever again. Like she was abandoned by whoever gave birth to her from the very second she came into this world, already deemed unlovable enough to give away.

Like she was ready to break down, and stay broken.

But nope, she didn't think about how she was feeling. She closed up all that junk, wrapped it in a box, and shipped it to a faraway place so she'd never have to see it again, because those feelings already had their run with the whole Hisato incident, and she wouldn't be letting them make an encore any time soon. She couldn't give a fuck about what Michi thought, at least on this topic, because no way in hell would she let anything take her over like that again.

If her normal panic from a world bound by laws of physics was bad, then the one that came through here mixed with chakra and weird magical powers was nothing short of pure, unadulterated agony.

But Michi didn't have to know that. So instead...

"I'm feeling good as always, Michi-sama," Sunari replied with an equal amount of superficial cheer, "Can I go outside and play today?"

Michi gave a playful frown. Sunari knew what the answer was going to be, even before she asked it.

"Not today, Sunari-chan. Today, it's too hot and I don't want your skin to burn. You're still much too young to go out there!" Michi proclaimed while wagging her finger.

Sunari sighed. It was always the same answer, wrapped in different cutesy disguises every time. She had a thought to write all of them down just to keep a record of the absurdity for future laughs.

Sunari pouted, hoping to keep up the "disappointed but cute child" act. "O _kay_ , Michi-sama. Can I at least come out of my nook today? I haven't really gotten much exercise recently."

"Exercise?" Michi tilted her head in confusion, "My dear, you're only five months old. You don't need exercise!"

Ah fuck, Sunari had to remember to not do that thing where she forgets she's not twenty-one anymore.

But before she could castigate herself further, Michi followed up thoughtfully, "...But I suppose because you've been so good recently, you can leave the crib today!"

Sunari had to quash the excitement that rose in her body and in her face, because hot damn Michi was behaviorally conditioning her and it was _working_.

To an extent, Sunari supposed that all child rearing was some form of behavioral conditioning. But this was some straight up Pavlovian shit, and if she didn't know any better, she would have thought Michi was trying to train her for something. It was pretty messed up actually, the more Sunari thought about it.

That's why she didn't, and let Michi carry her out of her crib and place her on the floor by her feet.

"Just be careful of the others," Michi warned with that tone that was just a little too genial. "They're still a little tired from last week."

Sunari hummed in confirmation, and padded away gently, Michi following until another orphan's cries stole her away.

Sunari knew that was a lie too. The moment her roommates shuffled back into their shared living space after the Hisato scene, she noticed immediately that all their chakra signatures got cold and closed themselves off from her.

She wasn't a fool. It might have been years since she was actually a child, but she knew ostracism when she saw it. And these kids, they were avoiding her like the plague.

She wasn't sure what caused it, because it wasn't just one or two of the orphans. It was _all_ of them. It maybe had to do with the fact that she scared off one of the biggest donors this orphanage had seen in years.

...Yeah, it was definitely that.

But well, she didn't mean to! Wasn't it normal for babies to have fits when they encountered strangers? They must have understood, didn't they?

Hisato too. The man was a piece of garbage, but if he was going to run away from adoption because of a crying fit, what made him think he could even adopt one in the first place?

It didn't make sense. But Sunari was in the Naruto world; _nothing_ made sense here.

She (slowly) made her way down the stairs, lamenting the lack of an accessible ride down yet again, when Takuma nearly bowled over her tiny body running up the opposite direction. He stopped just before causing the both of them injuries that would last for weeks.

In his usual taciturn manner, he held her gaze before nodding curtly. She wasn't sure why Takuma still acknowledged her, given that he was affected by her unfortunate bout with Hisato too, but it was nice to know that someone was at least neutral to her.

Because yeah, maybe she had twenty-one years of life experience behind her, but that didn't stop her from feeling lonely and unwelcome around everyone in the house not named Michi. She hadn't liked that situation any more than the kids had, but at least _they_ weren't alone when they tried to share their opinions about it.

After a reasonable amount of seconds passed, Takuma continued his ascent up the stairs, leaving Sunari to move onward with her pitiful descent.

She swore that she would think of some way around this awful downward journey in the future. When she got big enough to actually do shit other than crawl and breathe, she would build some contraption that would prevent suckers like herself from ever having to suffer themselves to this fate again.

She was in the midst of imagining ziplines of padded baskets hanging from the ceiling above the staircase, when she felt Takuma's mountain-like chakra pause, and curiously enough make its way back down the stairs. He moved in front of her so that he was a few steps below her.

Then, he pulled out a scroll from his pocket and unrolled it. Sunari could make out some kanji characters on the sheet, but she didn't have the vocabulary yet to know what it read. Takuma placed it flat on the floor, and Sunari realized just what he was doing as he bit his right thumb and raised his hand to slam it down on the scroll.

She felt a small surge of chakra as his hand made contact with the kanji, and watched a cloud of smoke emerge from the scroll. It cleared, and hovering above the parchment was what looked like a small wooden child with a brown tattered cloak over its body. It had segmented arms and legs that _looked_ normal enough, but what stood out was its O-shaped mouth full of razor thin needles. Though none of them protruded past the lips, they remained visible to those who stood directly before it, as though warning of a threat.

Or beckoning a challenge.

The real kicker though, was the matted maroon hair that topped its wooden head, and copper-colored buttons for eyes.

Sunari laughed internally, even though she was captivated and terrified at the same time.

His first piece was an autobiography.

Contrary to her knowledge of the doll, Sunari gave Takuma a quizzical look, as though to ask what on _Earth_ he was doing holding his hands up behind a large doll that looked ready to kill her. And why too; she was actually curious about that.

Takuma gave the slightest upturn of lips, and responded, "His name is Saisei. He's a puppet, and I made him two months ago."

...That answered everything and nothing. And really, _rebirth_? Takuma would never see the irony of his creation. But the boy was practically beaming with pride, as much as his stoic self was capable of beaming, so she didn't pester further on it.

Instead, she questioned, "Why am I meeting Saisei?"

He didn't answer verbally, but his fingers danced and Saisei staggered gently before moving forward in her direction.

Sunari flinched on instinct, and guarded herself with her small meaty arms.

Like that would do much to save her from getting pierced a million ways by a million senbon.

But Saisei didn't attack her. It came close, and using its anthropomorphic arms, hoisted her up and carried her close to its torso.

Sunari caught a brief whiff of willow and varnish, before Saisei started moving again. She peeked her head out to look at her surroundings, and saw she was being brought downstairs in a manner much too domestic for the dangerous puppet, Takuma following behind closely.

When they reached the ground level, Takuma had Saisei drop her down lightly on the floor. She looked up to see Takuma stand solemnly behind his puppet, like a pillar supporting a masterpiece.

Sunari felt...oddly touched by this act of kindness. Takuma really didn't have to go out of his way to help her, she would have made it downstairs eventually.

Her heart started swelling for this little boy who was so nice, so kind to her when everyone else was horrid and cruel, and she couldn't help herself from bursting, "Thank you Taku-"

A senbon shot directly at her face, and she nearly tripped over herself to avoid a 1-millimeter hole in her forehead.

Her heart swelled again, replacing the gratitude and warmth from seconds ago with acceleration and indignation. She glared angrily at Takuma, with all the betrayal and fury she could muster in a facial expression.

He just smirked, and uttered, "Training starts today."

Sunari's face fell blank, and shook her head in confusion. What?

His face dropped into its typical impassaive demeanor, and he asked, "Do you like this puppet?"

She paused, and bowed her head briefly.

Takuma continued, "Do you want to learn how to use one?"

Sunari's onyx eyes lit up, and she looked directly into Takuma's amber, searching for evidence of a lie or a joke.

There was none. He was being completely serious.

"Yes...you'd show me?" she answered hesitantly.

Takuma then gave that little not-smile again, and nodded. "Then it's settled. I will teach you what I know of the Puppet Master jutsu," he appraised her, and slightly frowned, "though I'll probably have to show you how to use your chakra first."

Sunari tried to give off a vibe like this _ninja training regimen_ wasn't that big a deal, but inside she was ecstatic. Since learning that that she was in the Narutoverse, she attempted using her chakra in the ways she remembered from the show. She had tried channeling it to her stomach, her _hara_ , where ninja mixed their physical and spiritual energies, but that ended in an epic fail. Instead of producing chakra like she wanted, she just gave herself a stomachache for the rest of the day.

She hadn't even guessed Takuma was capable of doing ninja things. She always knew that he had a little more chakra than all the other kids, but she hadn't see any indication prior to this that he knew jutsu.

But that was okay. It didn't matter too much to her because she was going to _learn how to be a ninja_.

Ignorant to Sunari's inner excitement, Takuma intoned sternly, "We have to protect our home. You and I, we have to keep our siblings and our mother safe. So be ready."

He brought two fingers up in what looked like a hand seal. Sunari felt another surge of chakra, and the puppet disappeared in a puff of smoke, almost as quickly as it appeared.

Confused by the sudden declaration, but enthusiastic from thoughts of training, she affirmed, "Okay."

Sunari thought chakra strings were one of the coolest things on the show, and like hell she would give up the chance to learn how to use them. Being able to dish out chakra strings to move stuff without touching it? It was the closest thing to telepathy she could get in this world without overpowered purple eyes, and finally her lazy ass wouldn't have to get up to do shit anymore. She could just bring everything to _her_.

Takuma nodded, and turned to walk up the stairs again.

It did cross her mind, though, that it might be a little dangerous being taught by someone who made a puppet with a mouth full of needles, but maybe he wasn't that bad. Even if he just tried to kill her.

She started crawling toward a couch near the door, where she could sit comfortably and feel a cool nighttime breeze, when she caught a glint of silver in her periphery. With an unprecedented and honestly illogical amount of speed, she dodged the senbon that embedded itself into the spot on the ground she had just occupied, panting as adrenaline overtook her again.

She changed her mind. It _would_ be that bad.

Sunari doubled her neck around to find the perpetrator, and there he stood on the staircase with a slightly amused grin and arms crossed in front of his chest.

"Always be ready," he remarked simply before actually walking away.

Sunari checked her chakra sense to make sure he was fully up the stairs and engaged in another activity before she turned her attention away.

That little brat. She would get him back for this one day.

But in the meantime, she let go of her small frustrations and finally made her way to the couch. She settled in, and stared outside as the chakra-enhanced buzz of people dwindled down. Finally, people were calling it a day and she could have some peace. Her chakra...nerves or whatever, were stinging a little more than usual today.

She rested her eyes and leaned as far back into the fraying green couch as her little baby body could.

Today was a good day. She had space to think, she had oriented herself to her time and place, she was going to learn cool ninja things, and she maybe had someone she could call a friend.

Her thoughts were filled of memories from a lifetime ago, of invisible threads of control and powerful magic spells and leaping across trees at breakneck speed. She smiled to herself, content in knowing she would soon know the ways of the ninja. Even if she had no plans of being one.

Then, a huge wave of something sinister and evil washed over her entire body. It filled her veins and resonated with the chakra in her body, pulling and pushing at it at the same time. It suffocated her, and she could have sworn she heard whispers of hysteria and screams of a dying woman.

The last thing she remembered seeing was the shade of the sunset sky, fading from warm purple and orange to deathly black.

* * *

In the newborn intensive care unit of the Sunagakure hospital, Rasa held back tears as he embraced the small, undersized child in his arms. His name was Gaara, and Karura loved him so much.

 _Karura..._

No. He was alone now. He would have no time for emotions, and Karura's sacrifice would not be made in vain. For her, for Suna, this child would become the greatest weapon his village ever wielded, and he alone would shape it to his will.

He stilled the tears leaking from his eyes, and his face grew rigid. He looked into the pale aquamarine eyes of the red-haired infant warbling below him, and had but one chilling thought.

His youngest son was a monster.

* * *

 **A/N:** This chapter was a lot, I know! But basically, we see the extent of Sunari's foreknowledge and what she plans (and doesn't plan) to do with it. Of course as we all know, things don't always go according to plan. Also that she's having some difficulties with chakra, is starting to pick up a little bit of Michi's character, and is horribly hypocritical when it comes to mental health.

Thanks for reading! Reviews would be super appreciated if you have the time and desire :)


	6. Chapter 5: Surprise

**A/N:** Ahh, sorry I'm late, just got lost on the road of life and had to help a cat stuck in a tree and a grandma carrying a bunch of groceries... *ruffles hair sheepishly*

But actually, I'm really sorry I took like a month-long hiatus on this story. Just got caught up with the end of the academic year and _graduating from undergrad_ and all... but I'm back! And as a thank you for waiting, I have a double update for y'all. Hopefully future updates will come more regularly too.

Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, followed, favorited, and lurked! You have been super patient with me and I appreciate that.

Some of y'all left comments about Sunari's status as a jinchuuriki, and I realized that the way I have depicted her thus far is pretty confusing... so that will be addressed in this chapter. Also, as one reviewer pointed out, I was a little ambitious in my timeline for Sunari's development, and I have rectified that in this chapter as well.

Disclaimer: Naruto, Suna, and the shinobi world belong to Kishi.

* * *

There are never quite the right amount of words to describe the feeling of surprise, Michi considered as she leaned against the door of the second floor quarters in her humble orphanage, watching her children fall peacefully into the gentle embrace of slumber.

Sometimes, surprise seemed like a shock that electrified her entire body, whole and to the core. She appreciated these moments, because they were the constant reminders that she was still _here_ , still alive, still grounded to this world.

Other times had her feeling like she was thrust in the battlefield again, keenly missing a stream of kunai from behind. She had to fight everything in her to not respond to that burst of adrenaline, that wave of fear rippling through her body, the overtrained instinct to kill first, ask later.

Because no matter what she _felt_ , the reality was that she wasn't an active duty shinobi anymore. She didn't have any reason to feel that battle-ready rush. She was an orphanage mother, and she loved her job, her role in society.

So of course, being in that role meant the biggest surprise she'd face these days was a triple adoption of her most troublesome children. All in all, nothing too big.

But if she was going to be completely honest, dropping all responsibilities as a kunoichi to raise the orphaned of Suna was one of the greatest surprises to hit her. She always had big dreams of becoming a jounin-sensei and teaching young genin in her village about the ways of the ninja. She was on her steady way to reaching her goal, if her performance in the Third Shinobi war was any testament to her fierce abilities.

Her vision of the future crumbled upon _that_ infamous battle, one that left her too scarred to carry on. Sunagakure and Iwagakure were at a stalemate, and the Fourth Kazekage wanted to tip the scales in the favor of Suna. He ordered a night ambush on Iwa's frontlines, which despite having met all parameters of the mission, was one fatal error short of a success in her eyes.

Suddenly, Michi gripped her head with one hand while clinging to the door frame with the other, eyes squinting in pain. The beds and little orphans in front of her faded away into bedrolls soaked with blood, as she slipped away into another of those flashbacks that felt too much like a genjutsu; too close, too vivid, too _real_.

Luckily, her thoughts faded quickly as she heard a choked sob from the far end of the room. Her flashbacks cleared immediately, and her eyes searched for the source of the sound.

Movement in the small alcove across the quarters captured her sight, and her still-capable night vision informed her that the small child in the wooden crate was shaking heavily, as though struggling to hold back tears.

She swept silently through the room, making her way to her youngest orphan. A quick sweep of her child's sleeping arrangements and chakra capacity confirmed that the now-toddler was indeed crying silent tears, attempting to mute herself as much as possible.

Michi's heart shattered, because this wasn't the first time and wouldn't be the last. She coughed lightly, to let the child know she was near, and reached into the crate to pick her up and carry her in her arms.

Sunari didn't protest, not anymore. Instead, she obliged willingly and clung to Michi's neck like it was a lifeline. The child remained silent, but Michi still felt the tears trickle down Sunari's face and onto her own collarbone.

She comforted her child, and made her way down the stairs. Never once halting her circular hand motions on Sunari's back, Michi walked out the back entrance of her orphanage into a small backyard. About the size of a small clearing, it never was much more than an oversized sandbox, but it seemed to bring comfort to her child.

Especially when she was in agony like she was at the current moment.

Michi drifted to an old swing set toward her right, and sat on one of the swings, letting her feet rise above the ground and gravity shift her seat gently. Feeling the soft rhythm of the swing's motions and the illuminated gleam of moonlight, Sunari's breathing grew more even.

Michi smiled weakly. She could never stand to watch her child, her beautiful, brilliant, brave Sunari, when she was like this.

* * *

It was about half a year ago when Sunari's pains first manifested, shortly after a surge of malicious chakra swept the entire village and had every person with an ounce of ninja training on their toes.

Her thoughts immediately concluded that Sunari was in distress, because the chakra felt _exactly_ like what overcame her on that fateful first meeting in the Kazekage's alleyway. Michi knew Sunari was downstairs, as she had been keeping tabs her and Takuma's chakra. After barking to her caretaking assistants to watch over the orphans upstairs, she slammed chakra into her feet for the first time in years to rush to her child.

She found Sunari slumped over on the green living room couch, unresponsive but still breathing. She reached out to Sunari's chakra with her own, attempting to ascertain what exactly distressed her and what the damage was.

To her great surprise, there was no evidence that Sunari had released any chakra at all. Not like last time, when she nearly fainted from chakra exhaustion after meeting Hisato and releasing all of her terror-inducing turmoil into the world around her.

Instead, Sunari's chakra coils now looked like something was _overflowing_ inside them. Like a dormant seed had bloomed into vines that pushed the boundaries of what her small body could handle, and her coils were expanding painfully to accommodate them.

Michi put aside that information for the time being; rather, she was more concerned with making sure Sunari would _survive_.

She felt Takuma pad cautiously toward her as he dropped down from the staircase. She had somewhat expected him to come, as she knew he recognized this malignant and foreign chakra as well.

"Takuma," Michi whispered softly across the deathly still living room, "Can you bring me a glass of water from the kitchen, and some of our stronger smelling salts?"

And bless his soul, he had come out of his nervous fear almost instantly upon her request, pacing quickly toward the room of interest for her desired items.

Letting her thoughts slip away from the child in her arms for the briefest moment, she beamed faintly with pride for her other prodigy. Most children, most _adults_ , who felt Killing Intent for the first time would freeze in their paths, a monstrous terror trickling through their bodies from the outside in. Encountering the heightened level of potency in her own child's Killing Intent, they would consider themselves gone from the world, their lives flashing before their eyes as they slowly awaited a merciless death. Hell, even _she_ froze when encountering it for the first time.

Takuma, for all the fear that he felt because of Sunari, never let it interfere with his will to care for her. He protected her, and kept her safe from harm. He did her absolute best to make sure she wasn't alone, as she had asked of him.

The maroon-haired boy obeyed all of Michi's requests, but over these past few weeks, she was wholly grateful that he had followed this one to the T. When she first introduced Sunari to her orphanage, she had asked Takuma to watch over her like a younger sister. He was hesitant at the time, as he could tell she was obviously keeping some things from him, but accepted it like it was his dutiful mission to complete.

To this day, he hasn't failed to carry it out.

He returned shortly with the items she asked for, and they spent the next hour trying to bring Sunari back to consciousness. The greatest progress they achieved was her small frame stretching and turning away from the light they brought into the living room, muttering words that Michi couldn't quite understand.

 _"Five more minutes, mom"_ was not something she had ever taught Sunari how to say, and she wasn't sure where she had learned that. Perhaps she made up a language using that calculating brain of hers. Or perhaps she was just muttering nonsense like an actual _normal_ baby her age did.

Either way, she didn't think this reaction was normal or healthy in any way. It also suggested that Sunari was _not_ the cause of the chakra surge from moments ago, and instead was weakened by it.

Michi found it odd that she hadn't heard any village alarms go off yet. Something big like that _had_ to have some explanation behind it, and she needed to know what exactly it was so she could make the appropriate preparations as needed to defend her orphanage.

She handed over Sunari to Takuma and asked him to watch her for a few minutes, as she got up from the couch and exited the front door. Warily, she approached the middle of the pathway and scanned her surroundings. Like her orphanage, the residential buildings and the marketplace plaza nearby were deadly quiet.

In the distance, toward the center of the village, she saw a series of lights flashing in the darkness of the desert night.

 _"No danger, all active and inactive shinobi are to report to Kazekage Tower at 0800 sharp for debrief,"_ she recognized as the message within the Suna "light" code.

She found this method of communication quick and efficient, especially for relaying non-critical messages. Only requiring a single location for distribution, the light code worked effectively because the Kazekage Tower was the literal center of the entire village, and given that the desert had virtually no light pollution, every single person, ninja or civilian, could see the messages of the light code from the top of the Tower. No additional resources or manpower were necessary - just a ninja flipping some switches or even lighting a mid-sized Fire Release jutsu, and order could be restored in seconds.

Sighing with relief, Michi re-entered her orphanage and decided Takuma had had enough stress for one night. To his protests, she sent him to his sleeping quarters on the same floor. Having confirmed that Sunari was conscious and responsive, she returned the young infant to her own sleeping quarters in the second floor alcove.

Sunari looked like she was dozing peacefully, and Michi smiled as she shifted her gaze from the brown-haired girl to the luminescent full moon outside the porthole window. No doubt she would find out what happened at tomorrow's meeting with the Kazekage, and she was impatient to know just what brought her child to unconsciousness.

Feeling content that her job was done for the day, she stole one last glance at the steady form below her, and walked away.

At exactly 0800 the following morning, the Kazekage informed the ninja of Sunagakure that his youngest son, Gaara, was born. His wife, the strong but sweet Karura-san, had died in the birthing process. This was because they sealed Suna's tailed beast, Shukaku, into the infant and the stress of birthing a jinchuuriki, _especially_ one that was premature, was too much for any mortal to handle. The resulting chakra surge was what all the shinobi assembled in the Tower had felt the night before; the evil, malignant chakra that stilled civilians and awakened shinobi was Shukaku's rage incarnate.

They were to carry on with all daily activities as normal, the Kazekage had ordered. There was no danger to the civilians or the ninja; his son would be under his control. They were to be assured that Gaara would grow into Suna's sharpest weapon, one that would lift them to their once-prideful stance in the shinobi world.

All the ninja in the room cheered at the Kazekage's moving declarations. They needed it - Suna was in a depression, people were dying daily as a result of starvation, and they just needed some hope to move on to the next day.

All except Michi, who worried more for the life of her young Sunari-chan. She had faith in the Kazekage to bring them back to their glory days, that much was true. But she thought about what these recent developments meant for Sunari.

That night, she was awakened by an agitation in chakra and found Sunari stirring again, this time sitting up in her crate in tears, weeping softly but wearily.

When she approached Sunari asking what was wrong, her daughter's onyx eyes widened and she turned her head away, wiping her eyes.

"Nothing's wrong, Michi-sama. Just some… some sand in my eyes," she choked out.

Michi frowned, sensing the lie immediately. She crossed her arms and put on a stern face, waiting for Sunari to pick up her cues to continue speaking.

Sunari definitely noticed, and deliberately laid down in her blankets, shifting her entire body to face away from Michi. It didn't go unnoticed by the practiced orphanage mother that Sunari achieved this with great difficulty, as though pushing through quicksand the entire time.

"Please don't worry about me," Sunari gritted out, "I'm fine."

Michi flinched, because anyone who answered with the word "fine" was clearly anything but. She tried picking up Sunari, but the moment her fingers made contact with the child, Sunari yelped in pain.

Michi backed away, because Sunari had unintentionally leaked out a bit, just the tiniest smidge of her potent chakra, upon Michi's touch. The chuunin took a glance at the room behind her. Even though all the little bodies were still, she could tell they were awakened by the disturbance because their bodies weren't showing the telltale signs of breathing in slumber. No, they were frozen with fear, motivated purely by instinct.

"Michi-sama,"—Michi's attention returned to the child, and was she _growling?_ —"Don't touch me. Don't worry about me, don't try to help me. Just don't..."

Michi wasn't content with this answer, but she didn't know what else to do. She couldn't exactly bring the child to the hospital, because she wasn't sure how the nurses or doctors would react to her chakra. She also couldn't risk the ninja taking her away, if they found her power to be something useful.

Suna was merciless in that way. They took what they thought they could craft into weapons, and they gave no alternative paths for one to walk in life other than that of the shinobi. They pushed, and pushed, and pushed, until all that was left was the emotionless, the clinical, the _killer_. Michi was just lucky enough to get out before it killed her.

She didn't want that kind of life for Sunari. Certainly, she would be training the girl herself once she was of age, but she would never force Sunari to kill unless it was absolutely necessary. For the sake of the orphanage, her siblings, for Michi.

So for the sake of keeping Sunari-chan safe, she compromised by finding another way to heal her little girl.

"Sunari-chan...let's go outside," Michi hummed softly.

Sunari stilled, and slowly turned her body toward Michi.

"Really?" she whispered warily.

"Really."

Sunari hesitated, but finally decided to raise her arms for Michi to cradle her and take her outside the walls of the orphanage, where she had been dying to go for quite a while. That instance began Michi's nightly ritual of sitting under the stars with Sunari, and watching the full moon take its rightful place hovering over the black sky.

* * *

Michi's gaze returned to the patterned blanket of stars filling the present night, but her thoughts drifted toward the surprise she felt and continues to feel around this small toddler, with eyes as black as the sky above her. For all the pain and suffering this child tolerated in the middle of the night, the only thing she needed to push it all away was a moment of calm in the warm summer air.

Indeed, Sunari grew more serene the longer they sat out there, and Michi was fortunate for it. She once thought that these were just growing pains, childhood grievances that Sunari would one day stop feeling.

Michi initially suspected that the young girl had some kind of hypersensitivity to chakra, that any effects chakra normally had on a person were amplified for her. Thus, upon encountering the demonic Tailed Beast chakra, her body absorbed too much input and caused her to pass out from overstimulation.

That's what she had hoped on the very first night. But after the village-wide meeting with the Kazekage... she wasn't so sure.

Because the girl's own demonic chakra... Michi wasn't sure what to think about that. There were unsettling parallels in the chakra of the Killing Intent that supposedly resulted from the birth of Gaara, Suna's newest jinchuuriki, and from her young orphaned Sunari. In fact, it even reminded her of the chakra of an Iwa shinobi she met on the battlefield, a Lava style user by the name of Roshi.

Did that mean somehow… Sunari-chan was a jinchuuriki too? Or a pseudo-jinchuuriki?

The peaceful little minashigo who rested on her lap shifted delicately, as though she was afraid she would hurt Michi by moving too much. She found a position she was comfortable with, and burrowed deeper into Michi's neck.

No. That didn't make sense. Michi was no sealing expert, but even she knew that jinchuuriki with their bijuu extracted died. There was no way around that.

Unless… the chakra had not been fully extracted?

Impossible. She could only think of one person who Rasa would trust for the procedure, and Chiyo-baasama wouldn't make such mistakes as that.

Even if that was the case, the sheer pain of sealing and unsealing should have been enough to kill a baby.

Her brain started to throb from the thoughts about jinchuuriki biophysics. She would rest this issue for now, but each time it came to mind, Michi grew nearer and nearer to the conclusion that she was the guardian of some kind of dead-but-still alive jinchuuriki, one who cheated death and kicked its ass out the front door.

Michi laughed softly, resting her gaze on her young one. Sunari would definitely do that.

Regardless, she had no way of confirming this conclusion. Sunari herself must have been a newborn when the process took place, since Michi herself found the young girl only a week after her supposed birth date. So the girl wouldn't know…

The Kazekage must know the truth. It explained why Sunari-chan was found only streets away from the Tower.

But at the same time, it didn't. They wouldn't have left her for dead if she was still alive… would they?

 _Tch, just like Rasa to discard a weapon as soon as its value depreciated._

Technically speaking, she was obligated to report her hypothesis regarding the child to the Kazekage, where the final decision to investigate or not would be up to his discretion.

But also technically speaking, to the Kazekage and anyone who might have been involved in her sealing process, little Sunari was already dead.

Michi shuddered. Thinking about what the lives of former Suna jinchuuriki were like… she couldn't bear force that on Sunari. Hell, even _before_ this came to light she didn't want the girl to be a kunoichi.

It was decided then. She would hide the girl for as long as she could, and train her to defend herself and her home. She would forge the girl's loyalties such that the orphanage came before Suna. Always, always, always, orphanage over village.

She hesitated, holding her breath. Maybe manipulating a one-year-old wasn't the most ethically moral thing to do…

Morality was relative, sure, but with the interests of Sunari at the forefront of her mind, there was no contest. She might have to do some questionable things, but in the end, she knew that the little black-eyed toddler would lose the light in her eyes if she were to fall into the hands of the village.

Yes, it had to be done.

Michi breathed out, moving her hand from the girl's back to her head. She lightly stroked the hair, a motion that proved to be very, very effective at putting the girl to sleep.

She would need to be careful about their training then, and about that uncontrollable chakra. It seemed like strong emotional surges brought about the release of the child's—no, Shukaku's Killing Intent. Sunari needed to learn how to reign in her emotions, before anything else. Given her hypersensitivity to chakra, her oddly advanced intellect, and quite frankly her _age_ , it was normal for Sunari to be emotionally unstable.

Patience. She'd teach the girl patience, and coping, and control. She had quite a few years learning those herself in kunoichi stealth training.

Rehab had been a good place to pick up some tips too.

They were just lucky that her range seemed to only encompass the perimeter of the orphanage. She couldn't imagine what would have happened if a shinobi passing through the street managed to sense the chakra in one of her surges, especially since the entire village was now familiar with the feel of Shukaku's chakra…

Yes, emotional control was key. The girl's own chakra system wasn't even developed anyway, so trying to train in that area was pointless.

Speaking of which, she didn't quite understand what Takuma was thinking when he said he'd teach the girl puppetry. She was still a toddler - there isn't really much to work with at that age.

Maybe he was just making silly declarations again. He was a fairly stoic child—well, as stoic as children could get—but he was very determined. Plus, he'd never had another sibling before who could use chakra like he could. She imagined that behind the expressionless face was an excited five-year-old boy who was jumping up and down to be able to teach some cool things to his little sister.

Feeling confident in her cogitations, she gingerly stood up from the swing and moved silently toward the orphanage, hoping to keep the small child from waking up again.

At the door of the second-floor quarters, she stopped to glance again at the alcove, which had become illuminated by the moonlight.

It was quite funny how Sunari ended up calling that her "living space." Michi had only put her there because she ran out of cribs at the time, and the alcove, as improper of a bed as it was, was the only reasonable place that a baby could live in that wasn't the floor.

When she was finally able to graduate one of the other toddlers to a normal mattress, Sunari politely declined the move, claiming the alcove was "cute" and that it was enough for her.

 _"I don't want to make trouble. I'm used to being over here… and so is everyone else. Moving would require some… re-adjusting for everyone. Too much of it."_

 _"Are you sure, dear?"_

 _"Hai, Michi-sama," the brown-haired toddler grinned._

Her little girl was so mindful and articulate, it seemed out of place in a one-year-old. There was so much Michi had in mind to teach her, yet it seemed the girl knew more than enough to be relatively independent.

That didn't seem right. But in the end, Michi couldn't complain because her young one's resourcefulness truly did allow her to fulfill her other responsibilities. Knowing that her two children Sunari and Takuma, who were to be both protectors and protected, could handle themselves, she was then able to take care of everything else, like keeping the orphanage afloat.

Indeed, after the unexpected turn of events, she was lucky Hisato wanted to put the incident behind them as quickly as she did. Apparently, he was embarrassed that he ran out of the orphanage and trembled all the way to the nobles' district on the other side of the village. They met briefly at a small park midway between their places of residences, somewhat close to the Kazekage Tower, settling the issue and leaving with a mutual agreement to never speak of the incident again.

Unfortunately, that meant the influx of funds that she had expected with his encounter also disappeared.

Once again, her orphanage was in a precarious financial situation. A year ago, even with government assistance she was nearing bankruptcy. Most of Suna was. That was when she (begrudgingly) made her way to the Kazekage Tower, asking Rasa for a mission.

Her first one in _years_ , and she barely made it back by the skin of her teeth. Luckily, because it was a B-rank, she made enough to scrape by for another few months.

Since then, she'd taken on four more missions. Each time, she had to lie to her children, her beautiful, beautiful orphans, claiming that her "brother" was "ill and needed a caretaker."

Takuma, of course, knew the truth—that she was a former kunoichi who needed some extra pay, and that she was a formidable one at that. He was the only one she could trust with such information. Sunari… she would learn in time. It wouldn't do right now to worry the girl. When Michi deemed her chakra system ready enough for nin- and genjutsu training, she would tell her.

For now though, she would have to be content with just doing enough to give them the bare necessities for survival. A roof, some food and water, companions…

Michi laid the girl back in the crate (another object that she oddly deemed "cute"), kissing her forehead gently.

The girl stirred, fluttering her eyelids.

Before Sunari could open them to reveal her rich chocolate-brown eyes, Michi shushed the girl. Whispering softly, she murmured, "I'll be gone again in the morning. Behave, and don't give the caretakers too much trouble. I love you, Sunari-chan."

"Never trouble… I always behave…" she smiled drowsily, "Love you too, Michi…"

When she was certain the girl had fallen into slumber again, the chuunin moved quickly to her own room. She changed into her standard mission gear: a coffee brown turtleneck long sleeve, dark brown pants taped from the shins down, ninja-standard black sandals, metallic forearm guards, and the khaki-colored Suna flak jacket with shoulder guards.

She stared in the mirror, seeing something before her that looked more like a ghost than her own reflection. Her pale blonde hair, much more radiant in her youth than it was now with its dulled shine, she patted down to cover with a turban, securing it in place with her Suna hitai-ate. She picked up a thin cloth, tying it behind her ears to mask the parts of her face below her eyes.

She took another look, faintly surprised at how drastically a uniform change could transform a woman.

Electing to take the window instead of the front door, the chuunin leapt into the warm midnight air and bounded toward the village entrance. A basic reconnaissance check on Kirigakure, that was all she was officially slated to complete.

Unofficially, any Kiri-nin who decided to get in her way… was fair game. So long as the body was unrecoverable, according to the Kazekage.

Despite her staunch dislike of all things shinobi-related, her lips pulled into a bloodthirsty grin. She _had_ been feeling quite stressed lately, and what better stress reliever than sanctioned murder?

She stormed out of the gate, flying in pursuit of Kiri.

The moonlight cast a terrifying shadow of a monster tearing through the desert sand, as the Suna no Chikaze, caged for years, was released into the wild yet again.

* * *

 **A/N:** A lot of monsters down here in Suna huh? Well anyway, sorry this chapter ended up being so Michi-centric. I originally wrote this chapter under Sunari's perspective, but it just flowed more naturally for me to do it this way as a time-skip with Michi's perspective. And to clarify once and for all, yes Sunari is a jinchuuriki (more pseudo than not), but so is Gaara. How? To be revealed in future chapters...

The next chapter is, once again, a Michi-centric one. It goes into her past and reveals a little bit more of her character. If you absolutely _hate_ Michi though, you can probably go without reading it. The chapter following the next will definitely return to Sunari's POV.

Note: minashigo = orphan

Thanks again for reading! Y'all are wonderful and I hope you're liking this story as much as Itachi likes dango.


	7. Chapter 6: The Suna no Chikaze

**A/N:** Hello again! Here is Part 2 of the double update. Hope this chapter sheds some light on Michi's background. Also just a little bit of world-building in here, if you look closely enough. If you hate Michi though, you could probably go without reading this chapter.

The war events of this chapter occur 4-5 years before Sunari's birth, and the post-war events about 3 years.

Disclaimer: The only one I own here is Sunari :^) and Michi, Takuma, and the orphanage, of course.

CW: suicidal thoughts, suicide attempt

* * *

Michi's mission that fatal night ( _her_ singular _mission and how could she fuck up she only had one job_ ) had been simple; while her squad rested for the oncoming midnight ambush, she was to enter the Iwa enemy camp and scout their shinobi, gathering information for her squad. A simple reconnaissance mission - nothing more.

The mission was complete; she had all the information she needed to assist her comrades when _they_ fought in the ambush - enemy numbers, general battle capabilities, guard shift changes, the whole shebang. She was on her way back to her own camp when she passed one of the kunai markers she threw into a rock on the floor. She noticed instantly that instead of being imbedded in the rock as she intended, it laid flat on the ground beside the rock.

Thinking that to be a sign that enemy shinobi had passed the same spot, she started racing toward her squad. She hadn't a clue what gave her away, but her comrades were in danger and she needed to warn them. To stop the enemy, and to keep them safe.

In her flurry, she tripped over something on the ground and saw the same rock with the same kunai on the ground. She gritted her teeth in frustration. It was a genjutsu.

She slammed her fingers into the Ram seal and yelled, "KAI!"

The genjutsu dispelled, leaving Michi surrounded by a sight that would burn forever in her memory.

Fragmented stalagmites created by Earth Style techniques jutted out from the rocky ground, into the bedrolls, _into_ her comrades. The campground was absolutely destroyed by various Earth and Fire jutsu, and there was blood _everywhere_.

It looked like a graveyard, with bloody tombstones built on corpses of the dead.

Michi stood frozen, glancing down to find a pool of blood collecting around her ankles. Her mind raged in frenzy, because _how did they get here before me how did they know where we were camped how did they know about the ambush how how how?_

Her thoughts ended there, because the stalagmites ( _grave markers_ ) were quickly racing toward her. Michi leapt backward on instinct, overriding her grief response that threatened to bubble at the surface.

Her stomach dropped in agony, while her blood boiled in anger. She knew she had to stay calm. Everything Suna ever taught her was _screaming_ at her to forget her comrades, to quiet her emotions, to assess the situation, and then to complete her mission at all costs.

But she just couldn't. In truth, she wanted nothing more than to _slaughter_ every Iwa nin who dared counter-ambush their ambush.

So she decided right then and there that she couldn't be fucked to adhere to protocol; she would make those Iwa nin _pay_.

Her moment of inner resolve was interrupted by two chakra presences creeping behind her. Spinning ninety degrees, she flashed through a sequence of hand seals ( _more quickly and furiously than ever before_ ) and raised her arms to her sides, palms facing both the stalagmites and her pursuers.

"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!" she roared viciously.

The chakra she had been gathering in her hands erupted into massive gales of wind that pushed everything in its path. The stalagmites were disintegrated by her jutsu, and the two Iwa nin that had materialized right before her attack were slammed into a nearby rock formation.

In her fury, Michi spared a glance toward her pursuers, confirming their demise with the amount of blood splayed behind their slouched bodies against the rock wall. She smirked.

"Who's next?"

After pushing all of the mangled Iwa bodies into a messy pile to be sealed away into a single scroll (emotional grief or not, spoils of war were never to be ignored), she then limped across the half-hour-old battleground and sealed each of her comrades away into individual seal cards, one by one.

Numbly, she returned to an outpost by the border and reported the outcome of the mission to the Kazekage by hawk. His response was nothing but militaristic praise for her ruthlessness on the field, and he quickly reassigned her to another mission on the frontlines. This time, she was to push even further past their previous proxy battleground in Ishigakure and toward the southeast border of Iwa, its larger neighbor.

She went, of course, displaying nothing but the perfect shinobi behavior. No emotions, no unnecessary actions, nothing that indicated she was anything more than a tool that Suna used to weaken other nations. ( _Couldn't anyone see she was hurting inside_?)

Those missions marked the beginning of bloody _massacres_ that gave her the war moniker of "Suna no Chikaze", the Bloody Wind of Sunagakure, after her calamitous wind jutsu that promised to spill the blood of her enemies.

Her mission was a complete success, as were all that followed. The Suna no Chikaze became a terrifying sight, and enemy shinobi who caught a sight of her pale blonde hair poking out of her Suna-standard turban or her ( _dead_ ) lavender glare roared orders to either kill or flee on sight. She took down any enemies who came in the way of her mission, a blank slate on her face throughout it all.

Finally, the battles dwindled, as did the war itself. It ended. The war was over. It was _finally_ over.

 _So why did she still feel like her mind was on the battlefield?_

* * *

Michi returned through the narrow sandstone walls of Suna's village entrance a war heroine, praise upon praise bestowed upon her for her devastating ninjutsu abilities and her quick thinking in combat. There were even rumors of her receiving an ex post facto field promotion to jounin. She was moving closer and closer toward her dream. What more could she ask for? ( _An end to the storm beating down on her soul_ )

Each time someone thanked her for her contributions to the war efforts, her expression never failed to dazzle with the smile that the Academy taught her to use whenever she needed to hide a lie.

The lie? She was no war hero. She wasn't a perfect shinobi. At least, not the ruthless and merciless one that every Suna citizen seemed to think she was.

She broke shinobi protocol. _Suna_ shinobi protocol. The rule that the mission always came before the comrades? Yeah, that rule flew out the window the moment she laid eyes on the bloodied camp. It wasn't just in that one battle, where her emotional grief over the loss of her comrades caused her to forget about leaving at least one enemy alive for information-gathering purposes, but it was also in the events that caused said battle in the first place.

The truth was, she was actually deployed to war initially for her expertise in stealth and subterfuge. Don't get her wrong, she was relatively decent in frontline combat. Her ninjutsu were short- to mid- range, and she had a taijutsu background that was slightly above average.

But the way she could almost entirely hide herself from enemy sensors and complete any infiltration mission assigned to her (which was indeed her track record thus far) was unmatchable.

But unmatchable or not, everybody made a mistake at some point.

Somewhere along the line, she messed up. Somehow, Iwa knew she was watching and knew about the ambush. They placed her in a genjutsu the moment she left their camp to return to her own, and they nearly cost her her life. _She_ was the one who made a mistake, yet the twenty irretrievable comrades in her ambush squad were the ones to pay the price. _She_ was the one who should have been punished with death.

Michi made certain to include this detail in her initial mission report, feeling overwhelmed by the guilt and wanting to take responsibility for the deaths of her squad.

After all, failure in Suna could result in any punishment as determined by the Kazekage, ranging from simple suspension to execution. ( _It should have been her_ )

Yet the Kazekage had decided to acknowledge and subsequently ignore that detail, instead commending her brutality and recommending she continue that battle style throughout the rest of the war, which she did.

( _Was her one life really worth more than those of her comrades?_ )

To this day, she still has no idea what gave her position away. Regardless, she had tried sharing her blunder with others, waiting for them to snap and tell the Kazekage, where he'd be convinced to sentence her to the blade.

No one ever did.

Instead, they lauded her accomplishments, placing her on a pedestal reserved for legends. They all seemed to overlook her break in protocol, because technically the mission was a success. She singlehandedly ( _with the blood of her comrades on her hands forevermore_ ) destroyed their counter-ambush, which allowed Suna to push deeper into Iwa's territory, forcing them to turn their offensive toward Konoha instead. She gave them the push to make it through the war, and for that reason, small technicalities like forgetting the mission could be swept to the side if it was achieved successfully in the end.

She continued to shine a bright smile for the villagers, but her soul felt darker than any night sky. Inside there was nothing, and outside there was nothing worth living for.

She considered herself a subterfuge professional, yet her friends in the village still managed to notice a dull in her eyes that contradicted her smile and a lack of emotion in their interactions with her. _This_ of all observations they decided to report to the Kazekage, who called Michi to his tower, who shortly informed the Kazekage that she would be retiring from the shinobi service, effective as of that day.

He gaped silently for almost a whole minute, and subsequently proceeded to tirade against her insubordination and ungratefulness as a kunoichi of Sunagakure for all of three seconds, when she suddenly pulled a kunai from her pouch and held it to her throat.

She made sure to draw blood to reinforce the threat, a blank and impassive mask glazed over her facial features the entire time.

"Would you rather have me retired in the village, or dead in Hell?"

He declared Michi a suicide risk, and had her institutionalized. She still retained her shinobi status.

( _They really did forget she was a master of stealth._ )

* * *

Escape was child's play. No one ever checked on the psychiatric patients, because after all, what ninja acknowledged mental illness?

Michi slipped out of her small cell with ease, quickly finding the exit to the cold and dark streets of Suna. The chakra-limiting seals weighed down on her limbs, but she didn't need chakra for what she was about to do.

* * *

In her quiet studio apartment, Michi placed a vial and a glass of sake on her kitchen table. In the former was poison manufactured by Chiyo-baasama, the famed puppet mistress of Sunagakure herself ( _her village wasn't the only one claiming spoils of war_ ).

As for the latter, well, she just wanted to enjoy her last meal.

She poured the poison into the sake, sniffing the concoction for no reason in particular ( _scentless, just what one would expect from Suna's revered poison master_ ).

She picked up the glass and placed it to her lips. She had numerous regrets she wanted to rattle on about, but she had a lifetime in Hell to take care of that. Michi tipped her head back, and opened her li—

A crash through her living room window, a kunai shattering the glass, a hand wrapped around her wrist. She turned her head toward the lone Anbu member with sandy blonde hair in an Anbu uniform ( _of course, Rasa would send no lesser shinobi_ ).

The young twelve-year-old Yashamaru was silent, but his iron grip circling her wrist and Killing Intent emanating from his body said enough.

( _If they're going to torture me into compliance, they might as well just kill me._ )

"The Kazekage wants to see you, immediately," he stated impassively.

Michi closed her eyes, dipping her head as a sign she accepted the implied order. He proceeded to Body Flicker her all the way to the Kazekage Office.

* * *

"Kazekage-sama, I have brought Michi-san as you requested."

Rasa's back was to the pair, his attention seemingly focused solely on the view of his village outside his window. He hummed in acknowledgement.

Michi scoffed in her head. When did the Kazekage ever _request_ anything?

"You may take your leave, Yashamaru-kun."

"Hai, Kazekage-sama," Yashamaru bowed and turned to leave through the door.

As they made eye contact upon his departure, Michi swore she saw a glint of remorse in his violet eyes. She blinked, and it disappeared, leaving behind a face as blank as Michi's.

She furrowed her brows in mild confusion.

"Michi."

The chuunin recovered from the brief distraction, re-donning the familiar blank mask hiding her true emotions. She brought her attention back to the Kazekage, who had walked around to the front of his desk to face her, arms crossed and stance wide. A deep-set frown framed the lower half of his face, as black met lavender.

They held eye contact for an uncomfortable two minutes, before Michi finally couldn't take it anymore. Subterfuge expert or not, she had enough of his bullshit. She respected the man, but sometimes he was just an asshole.

"Kazekage-sama, if you're going to torture me into obedience, please feel free to start anytime," she spoke with a hint of bitterness.

And oddly enough, his facial features softened, as though a tension holding his face together was suddenly released.

"Michi-san," he sighed, closing his darkened eyes shut and shaking his head side to side.

"You have been testing the edges of my patience. You're right in your assessment of the situation; were you not the beloved teammate of my wife, Karura," he opened his eyes to meet Michi's with unsparing scrutiny, "I would have had you either tortured or executed for your blatant insubordination and suicidal ideologies."

Karura? He still remembered that she and Karura were teammates?

Rasa continued, "I won't pretend to understand what is going through your mind. I do, however, understand the bond you and my wife share, and I know she wouldn't want me to take the... actions... that I had in mind. She has, in fact, informed me of this many times since your return."

Michi's delicate mask started to chip away, ever so slowly. She avoided his gaze.

"Furthermore, you are an important person to this village. Not only for the strengthening of its military might, but also for the pride of its people. You may not recognize your life as having value, but these villagers do. I do."

Michi's head jerked to stare at him in shock. Her mask had cracked even more deeply, only half of it remaining.

"So, if the only way we can have you serve the village is as a civilian… that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make," he admitted. "Of course, there are conditions. In the event of village emergencies and other events that require the assistance of all available shinobi… you _will_ come out of retirement, if only temporarily."

She couldn't believe the words she was hearing. The Kazekage accepting her demands, with reasonable conditional terms?

She nodded, slightly stunned. Her emotionless mask, the one she had grown accustomed to wearing since the night of the ambush, fell away entirely.

"However… make another careless attempt on your life again, and you won't find me nearly as gracious," Rasa warned gravely, with a note of fatality.

"Hai… Kazekage-sama. Thank you… for the opportunity," she bowed genuinely in reverence and gratitude.

Recognizing that there was bound to be an influx of orphans after the war, Rasa had decided to give her an indefinite assignment to start and lead an orphanage. The only vacant building suitable enough for the job was a two-story stucco house at the edge of the village, close to the village entrance. She accepted, and began preparations for the "Mirai no Saryu" Minashigo-In.

She found herself walking to her new home with an upward quirk of her lips. It could barely be called a smile, but it was the closest thing she felt to it since she lost her comrades in battle.

Little sand grains of the future…

Maybe for them… maybe for the future of Suna, she would stay alive. Just a little longer.

* * *

 **A/N:** And that, my dears, is nepotism at its finest. Mahh it's not _just_ a plot device - nepotism runs in all governments, including the ones in Naruto. Why else would every single Hokage be the former student of a previous one?

Anyway, thanks again for your patience! I hope the wait was worth it. Please leave a review if you think anything is off or should be explained more thoroughly. I do try to fit this story within the parameters of canon as much as possible, so I hope that I'm doing a decent job of that so far.

Note: Mirai no Saryu = sand grains of the future, Minashigo-In = orphanage

Next chapter, we'll see what Sunari thinks of everything happening in her life in the Narutoverse... See you then!


	8. Chapter 7: Meditations on Life

**A/N:** Hello hello! Thanks to my followers, favoriters, reviewrers, and lurkers! You keep this engine running. Here is the latest update. Keep in mind that everything here is _Sunari's_ POV, so if it sounds like it contradicts something else already given in the story, that is why.

There's about a 2-year time gap between the last-last chapter and this one, so Sunari is 3, Takuma is 7, etc.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

* * *

 _Peace. Calm. Quiet._

 _In… out… in… out… imagine yourself breathing in positivity from the world… and breathing out the negativity._

 _In… out… in—_

"Gah!" Sunari ducked as she fell out of her meditative stance on the alcove and landed headfirst onto the warm clay floor. A thin metallic needle jutted out from the wall underneath the circular window.

Rubbing her head tenderly, she pulled her body up and glared around the room for the culprit, knowing he was close by. Now where was he…?

 _Found him._

She stood to pull the senbon out from where it landed at the back of the alcove—her _living space_ god damn it—and threw it at the second bed in the right-side row. A hand shot up from behind the scratchy blue comforter to catch the needle between two fingers.

A mop of maroon followed it, and a blank ass face that Sunari got extremely tired of seeing. She scowled, berating the boy, " _Takuma!_ How many times do I have to tell you to stop interrupting my meditation sessions!?"

The seven-year-old stood silently, shrugging, "More times than I cared to count."

Sunari threw her hands up in frustration, praying to no god in particular to give her the patience to deal with a little boy with access to too many senbon needles and too much free time.

"You _know_ Michi-sama has been working hard to help me control my emotions. That's _why_ I have to do all this meditation stuff," she lectured, "I don't… don't want a repeat of what happened before…"

Takuma walked toward her, senbon in hand. He squatted slightly so that he was eye-level with her, and stared at her so that his amber eyes looked into her onyx.

Then he poked her in the nose with the needle.

She swatted his hand away, needle flying toward the wall. "What the fuck? Stop doing that to me!"

"Stop being so dramatic. You need to always be aware of your surroundings too," he stated blankly before smirking, "since you've failed to stop any of my strikes for the past three years."

Sunari opened her mouth to spew something witty in return, but Takuma had turned around and started walking away.

"Hey! Get back here, I'm not done with you!" she started chasing after him.

Though he kept walking toward the entrance to the stairway, he moved his hand behind him so that it was facing Sunari, and made quick movements with his fingers.

Sunari's eyes widened, realizing what was going to happen, and shouted, "Ah fuc—"

—And tripped flat on her face.

By the time she got up to scowl at the boy and declare vengeance on him one last time, he was already gone.

"God damn it, that chakra thread wieldin' _asshole_ ," Sunari muttered as she dusted off the sand from the floor and made her way back to her alcove, now covered with padding, sheets, and an assortment of pillows since outgrowing her wooden crate "bed."

Sitting back down, she closed her eyes and attempted to re-center herself. It wouldn't do to meditate on an agitated mind, after all.

Breathing evenly again, she resumed her meditations.

 _Imagine the breath bringing oxygen into your body, invigorating it and giving it life… now imagine that energy flowing gracefully through your veins…_

* * *

Reflecting on the words of the meditation, Sunari wasn't sure "gracefully" was the right term to describe how her "veins" had been feeling. "Dante's ninth circle of hell encased in a small three-year-old body" was more like it. Honestly, if she had known chakra was going to be this much of a bitch, she would have elected to be reborn as a civilian.

Not that she had much choice in the matter anyway.

It was endurable for the first few months. There were always the aching and uncomfortable sensations, but she learned she could forget about them if she had other things to do (like picking up an entire _language_ ). In fact, it was actually pretty convenient to have a chakra sense, because with it she could literally know where every single person was in the house without having to move. Made it easier to snack on sweets when Michi wasn't looking…

But after _that_ day, things went downhill. Real bad.

Sunari knew that Gaara's birth caused a lot of difficulties in Sunagakure. So many, in fact, that his dad felt the need to _assassinate_ him six different times.

But… what the hell happened on that day to make _her_ pass out?

Michi said she talked to her ninja friend, who supposedly diagnosed it as "hypersensitivity," a concept that Sunari recognized from her old world after a bit of description.

Essentially, a chakra hypersensitive was a person who was so sensitive to chakra that the mere presence of it caused their body to be overwhelmed by the vast sensory input. The individual would have exceptional sensory abilities, yes, but at a cost. And that was just on the _outside_.

 _Inside_ the body, the cells were just as sensitive, if not more. It often got to the point where chakra was registered not as a natural part of one's body, but as a foreign substance. In most documented cases, the body of a chakra hypersensitive rejected the normally life-sustaining matter, rendering the individual ill for the remainder of their lives.

Which, in the Naruto world, was the equivalent of a chronic autoimmune disorder. With some consolatory super sensory skills added in the mix. But, as Michi's friend dictated, it was an incredibly rare disorder that usually only impacted civilians, because their bloodlines had yet to adapt to chakra.

 _That's pretty convenient, isn't it?_ Sunari had ruminated cynically. _Dropping a former civilian into a world of ninja, where said civilian who had potential to be a ninja was plagued by a chakra disorder because of her former existence as a civilian?_

She knew hypersensitivity to chakra was a relatively common thing among reincarnations, but she never really thought about _why_. And god flippin' shit she never imagined it would feel anything like it did with her body.

But in terms of _that day_ in question, Michi hypothesized that her hypersensitivity had a major reaction to the circumstances surrounding Gaara's birth. She had described his chakra as being demonic, since it was linked to that of Shukaku, the "living spirit of an angry Suna priest." ( _That was just plain false_ , Sunari snubbed internally but rolled with anyway.)

And it was dangerous, so very dangerous that even _shinobi_ might piss their pants when encountering it.

So when Gaara was born, it was likely that Shukaku, the "priest" ( _bijuu_ ) sealed in the boy during his mother's pregnancy—and wasn't that a sad fact of life, knowing your baby was going to be born with someone else's monster chakra—released his anger into the world. That anger manifested as something called "Killing Intent," which is literally just a physical embodiment of someone's intent to kill.

Killing Intent wasn't something to be seen but to be _felt_ , as Michi depicted, in every fiber of your being, deep beyond the physical and into the psyche. It made children throw up their lunches, and adults run for their lives.

Fantastic.

So pair that feeling with a chakra hypersensitive… and you get Sunari. A sucker who passed out on the living room couch after overdosing on chakra.

Sunari thought Michi's breakdown of the technicalities was unusually _detailed_ for someone just retelling a description. She made a remark about that to Michi, who put on a (very delicate) smile and disclosed that she must have just had a pretty good memory. Sunari mirrored the smile, and asked no further questions.

Well, that all made enough sense. Sunari could get by with that explanation and try to understand the physics of chakra more thoroughly.

But that hypersensitivity business… didn't really explain the additional pain she felt _after_ Gaara's birth.

Like everyone else in the vicinity of Suna that day, she was hit by the chakra surge filled with "Killing Intent." And of course, being a hypersensitive, she'd pass out from the engulfing sensory input. But it had left behind something… something that she carried with her to this day.

She couldn't put it in any way other than that her body just felt like it… _gained_ something that day. And it pushed against her skin and her veins and her organs and _everything_.

Afterward when she woke up, her whole body felt like it was on pins and needles - everywhere, _all the time_. Like in her old world, where she'd sit on her ass too long and start feeling prickly after a while, but if she stood up and walked around it'd go away. Except… here, it wasn't _just_ her ass, and it _didn't_ go away unless she put her mind to focusing on something else entirely.

She started to think her body actually received some kind of long-term _hyper_ -hypersensitivity from the chakra surge, like a traumatic wound or some shit like that, because the pain didn't recede. Logically, she'd expect that "major" instances like that would hit hard, but their effects would disappear after enough time had passed.

They didn't.

If she were to put it on some kind of gradient, her daily pain from before Gaara's birth was like a 4 or 5—mild irritation, but nothing she couldn't handle with a few activities to take her mind off it. _After_ Gaara's birth, her pain jumped up to 7 or 8 on the same scale—on a daily basis.

She _really_ hoped her body would grow used to chakra soon.

Michi's meditation lessons helped. A lot, actually. She originally prescribed them to help Sunari "control her emotions," but in actuality they served a dual purpose—they helped her control her pain too. Being able to breathe consciously and be mindful of her surroundings was… surprisingly an excellent way to mitigate the pain. Meditation improved focus and concentration, because it _was_ , in its essence, focus and concentration.

The orphanage mother said she had more things to teach in the future, but for now the meditation would do. And so, Sunari, being the good little orphan she was who didn't want to make trouble for an already stressed mum, but also being the little brat who wanted to stop feeling shitty every day, started meditating daily. Multiple times a day, in fact.

It had taken a couple of years for Sunari, and they weren't easy by any standard. She had gone _days_ at a time without moving from her little crate, simply because it hurt slightly less to stay in the position she woke up in than to turn around and greet someone like Michi or Takuma.

On days like those, the only time she ever moved was when Michi took her outside at night. Picking out the stars at night, trying to play connect-the-dot with her eyes as the pen and her imagination as the canvas, that was one of the few things that she could do to bring the pain down to a bearable level.

That, and reading. A _shit_ ton. On the days when she could actually pick herself up from bed, she meditated, but the rest of her energy was devoted to reading scrolls, memorandums, novels, pamphlets, newspapers, children's books, anything and everything Michi could get her. Her mind was fairly active on those days, and she absorbed as much information as she could.

By this point, she could tell you about a whole range of topics that were considered reading material in Suna, from which battlefields Chiyo infected with her deadly poisons in the Second and Third Shinobi World Wars, to what happened to the little shinobi boy who cried coyote. (The answer: he died, because he lied about there actually being a desert coyote eating the local possums until a real coyote showed up, beat his ninja-less ass, and ate him.)

And so, after about two years of practicing meditation, taking up hella reading, and doing some other simple concentration exercises assigned by Michi, Sunari managed to adjust her pain scale. Not eradicate, no, because the pain would never disappear. But she was able to shift her 7 and 8 days to 4's and 5's. On "5" days, the pain, though still registering as pins and needles in her body, was perceived in her mind as niggling tingles. Basically, she acclimated.

Thank _kami_ when that happened.

But… the young toddler still didn't fully get what her orphanage mother meant when she first suggested teaching her "emotional control." In fact, she thought she had a fairly good grasp on her emotional state, being that she _was_ planning to be a therapist prior to falling here and all.

Buuuuut then Michi reminded her of the time that stupid-looking man strutted his way into the orphanage and subsequently ran the fuck out within seconds of meeting her. And…

Yeah, fair point.

Sunari couldn't complain though - meditation really was a multipurpose tool. She didn't get huge surges of emotion anymore because of it (as Michi intended), and even when she _did_ feel one coming on, she pulled from her practices and got herself back on track. Using the same focus that she used to regulate her pain, she used meditation to bring her attention to her breathing or her thoughts instead of her emotions. It worked brilliantly.

But of course, nothing in life came quite so easily.

Her emotions and pain and all were fine in the daytime, on the most part. She managed.

But nighttime was a completely different story. Whatever progress she made with acclimating to pain or emotional instability was _completely_ negated once the sun went down. Her pain levels would spike so monstrously that she lost count of how many times she bit her tongue to stop herself from howling with misery. Or she'd get irritated at the smallest thing, like a grain of sand in her bed, and would nearly rage at the nearest child in unreasonable fury.

She'd find herself lying awake deep into the night, pins and needles spiking her body all throughout it. Oh, she had been up countless nights in her past life, doing frivolous things like procrastinating on assignments or reading manga, but somehow doing it here in such an unpleasant fashion… didn't bring as much nostalgia as she might have liked.

Michi, bless her soul, found _that_ glorious solution by simply changing the girl's locations from indoors to outdoors.

Well, it wasn't a perfect one, and not always feasible in the windy desert climate. But lying peacefully in Michi's arms while admiring the pinpricks of light spotting the darkness of the universe was… centering. Somehow, it was enough to help Sunari tolerate her pain, at least enough to fall asleep.

When that _still_ wasn't enough, well, there was always a stack of books and a candle waiting for her in the living room. Which she unfortunately had to employ, very often.

And so, to Sunari, Michi almost felt like… a real mom. Despite all the woman's secrecy, behavioral conditioning, and thinly veiled smiles, Sunari felt like she could overlook those flaws, simply because Michi taught her valuable things and pulled all-nighters with her and _loved_ her. Even though Sunari had lost her mom upon arriving in Suna and was abandoned by her second one, Michi was there for her as though she had given birth to her herself.

Sunari wouldn't realize it until much later, but that unconditional, undying love was something she would suffer through torture for to protect.

 _Takuma_ , on the other hand, that grade-A piece of trash… eh, maybe. He was like the annoying older brother who pranked her for no good reason. Thinking himself all high and mighty, he would so _graciously_ teach her "ninja" lessons to pair with Michi's emotional control ones. She was starting to think he was full of some bullshit, because he totally lied about teaching her how to be a ninja.

Sunari asked Michi about it a little while after recovering from her blackout _that day_ , and the woman just laughed. Sunari thought it was a little mocking. But then Michi saw her expression, and grinned.

"I wouldn't be too sure about that… most of the shinobi children I see in the village don't start learning until they're 4 or 5."

It was then that Sunari decided Takuma was a lying bag of _garbage_ who needed to be taken outside.

But Michi reassured her, saying that he probably had the best intentions in mind, he just didn't realize that he couldn't teach her stuff yet, he was excited, blah blah blah…

Quite frankly, she couldn't see the boy as being excited about _anything_. His stoic face did not belong anywhere on a child, and she wanted to smack it off him.

Too bad she could never get close enough to do it.

Regardless, to say the least she had a bunch of problems. A _hyper_ -hypersensitive chakra system with more downsides than upsides, an emotionally unstable mind that somehow made weak men shiver all the way home, and a still-developing body that couldn't yet build chakra.

 _Truly, what an entrance to the Naruto world._

* * *

Sunari opened her eyes, feeling like the meditation was hopeless at this point. She'd gotten distracted, and this session just felt like a rambling jumble of her misplaced thoughts. She always struggled to re-align herself every time that happened.

Sighing, she got up from her cushion and plopped her feet onto the floor.

Her stomach growled, and she frowned. Meditation made her hungry sometimes.

Or maybe it was just that at her age, she was _always_ hungry.

She decided to go downstairs to the kitchen to forage for a snack. She started walking to the door to the stairway, but a group of orphans were crowded around the entrance, blocking her path. They turned their heads sharply to face her as they noticed her coming closer, and rapidly backed away to make room for her.

She frowned, passing through two rows of frightened children that _resembled_ Moses's parted seas but _acted_ like they were parting for the devil rather than a godlike prophet. She muttered a quiet thank you before moving forward to the stairs.

 _They are still…_ Sunari thought with bitter melancholy.

She gritted her teeth. When she had tried to gather insight from Michi about why all the other orphans (barring Takuma) acted as they did, Michi gave her an answer that wasn't really an answer.

" _Sunari-chan my love… it's not so easy a question to answer. You are just a special little minashigo, and you have something others don't have. That something is just… a scary something, when others aren't used to it."_

" _So you and Takuma-kun are used to it?"_

"… _You could say that._ "

 _Sunari nodded. "But what is that 'something' though, Michi-sama?"_

 _Michi returned with a perfectly porcelain smile, "A gift, one that you will appreciate when the time comes."_

She gave no further explanation after that. As usual, Michi was vague when it came to the questions that mattered the most. Sunari supposed that was just how adults in this world taught things to children.

 _Annoying. But the woman_ is _my stand-in okaa-san, so I'll just have to make do around it,_ Sunari decided.

At the bottom of the stairs, Sunari made her way to the left side of the large living room (again through a parted sea of orphans), and walked through an opened door into a modest-sized kitchen.

The orphanage kitchen wasn't glamorous by any means, but it certainly wasn't small either. It was just big enough for thirty to forty (depending on the adoption season) orphans to shuffle through in a semi-organized fashion during meal times, during which they would cycle in and out of each "station" buffet-style.

The walls, like every other room in the orphanage, had faded paint streaking across their surfaces. However, it had faded so much that the original sandy color of the adobe walls was visible across large patches.

To the left of the entrance was a long adobe counter that was used to hold the plates of food during mealtimes. Next to it was an impressively large off-white fridge ( _how much did that cost?_ ), and another counter running to the right of it ending at the back wall, with a stove and oven intersecting in the middle. All along the left wall, cabinets and drawers lined the upper and lower sections of the counters.

Along the right side of the room was nearly the same set-up, except there was no fridge, and instead were three rice cookers and a couple of hot water boilers lining the back counter.

Looking up through her growing brown bangs, Sunari reached to open the refrigerator door. And there was…

 _Nothing._

Sunari sweat-dropped. Whenever Michi was out of the orphanage, the other caretakers would often forget to restock on food until it was right before a meal time. That meant… the other kids probably snagged whatever was left over from lunch, making her the "late bird" that missed the worm.

She closed the door, and sighed. It didn't go unnoticed by Sunari that Michi's absences were happening more and more frequently. The woman said they were due to her brother's illness, and given that he was becoming unable to care for himself, she being his sole family member had to care for him.

 _Just how much stress did that woman have to take on for everyone she cared about in her life?_

After checking every cabinet, drawer, and even the _oven_ for any scraps, Sunari walked out of the kitchen even hungrier than she had been in the morning. She made her way to the green scratchy couch, and laid facedown lengthwise, mock-shouting flatly into the old cushions.

If Sunari didn't understand exactly what kind of delicate financial situation Michi and the orphanage was in, she would have called this "child abuse." However, given that they barely had enough to remain standing, she was a little more forgiving. Like everyone else, she just had to suck it up and go hungry until mum came home.

Her stomach growled again.

She sat up into a normal sitting position, rubbing her sad empty belly. The pins and needles threatened to loom again too, which she discovered would conveniently emerge whenever any component of her health took a dip, even simple things like hunger and thirst.

A beam of sunlight hit her face, temporarily blinding her.

"Gah! Damn everything…"

When it passed, Sunari found herself looking outside the glass windows that revealed the bustling street in front of their building.

 _It's right around the busiest marketplace hours, isn't it…_

Sunari took a quick glance around the living room. Any of the orphans who were in the room with her had already fled the instant she entered, and the caretakers were upstairs, according to her chakra sense. Takuma was taking a nap, judging by the rise and fall of his sturdy chakra a few rooms away.

She looked back to the door.

Putting her hand to her chin to enter a thinking pose, she considered what would happen if she took a short little trip outside to look for a snack. No one was around to tell her _no…_ and Michi wasn't home. It wasn't even clear _when_ she'd be back.

But… Michi did tell her to never go outside without the orphanage mother monitoring her. That was fair, given that she was only three and the threats out there in a ninja village could _literally_ kill her.

Sunari's stomach rumbled yet again, more deeply and angrily than before.

 _Doesn't matter. We're going out today._

Determined in her decision, she got to her feet and strolled over to the door. She paused, a slight sense of nerves stopping her in her tracks.

She'd only ever gone outside with Michi by her side, and even then at night in the safety of the orphanage backyard. Who knew what was out there beyond the refuge of home?

 _Ah, I'll have to do it eventually. Might as well be now when I can follow my own itinerary._

She reached up to grab the doorknob, and turned it to pull open the clay-based door to the street. Daylight burst through the open entrance, and warmed her from head to toe.

Sunari beamed with a smile as bright as the sun. _It's time to explore Sunagakure._

* * *

 **A/N:** So I had a really hard time making this chapter flow logically, and I'm not sure if my points came across the way I wanted them to. There are obviously some things that I'm leaving for later chapters to uncover, but if nothing really makes sense in this chapter, drop a line and I'll add a summary into this A/N.

Sorry y'all if it seems this story is moving really slowly... there's just a lot I want to cover before the next stop on the Plot station. Not much about Suna is shown in canon, so what that stop is should be fairly obvious. Heh.

Thanks for reading! As always, leave a message if something bugs you. Or if you just want to leave a happy review! See you in the next chapter, for Sunari's adventure on the streets of Suna!


	9. Chapter 8: Meeting Sunagakure

**A/N:** Hello lovely readers! Longer A/N at the bottom, but for now hope you enjoy this chapter! Plus, what you've been waiting for... guest appearances by canon characters!?

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, but wouldn't that be cool if I did?

CW: elder abuse, mild child abuse, auditory hallucinations

* * *

Last chapter:

 _She reached up to grab the doorknob, and turned it to pull open the clay-based door to the street. Daylight burst through the open entrance, and warmed her from head to toe._

 _Sunari beamed with a smile as bright as the sun._ It's time to explore Sunagakure.

* * *

Let it be stated on record that Suna in the summer is a literal _waking hell_.

Sunari was nervously excited for all of five seconds when she burst through the orphanage door and into the street, until the heat wave from the unrelenting desert sun bore down on every part of her body. It was just after lunchtime, early afternoon, so the sun was still high in the sky. Even her feet were starting to burn from the heat radiating from the ground, and she was wearing sandals with _thick_ soles.

It was then that she reconsidered her little escapade.

 _Why did I come out here again…?_ Sunari thought with a deadpanned face.

She turned around to take a look at her reflection in the orphanage front window. Her tan face was frail and slim, her eyes black like the night sky. Coffee brown hair fell to her shoulders in slightly frizzy strands, parted to the left. Her hand-me-down sandals were of a brown shade matching her hair. Judging from the distance between her head and the ground, she was probably around two and a half feet tall. Short for her age of three years, but given the relative malnourishment, unsurprising.

To bring all of Sunari's messy-but-cute-enough-to-give-food-to orphan look together, she wore a baggy cream-colored tee with black shorts. Like the rest of the clothes that the orphans wore, both items were thrifted or otherwise obtained by asking for donations from the villagers.

Her attention was then brought to the thin layer of sweat developing on her skin from the scorching heat. That didn't mean anything good, because if she was sweating, that meant she was exhausting her limited supply of energy. And if she was burning through her energy as quickly as the sun was burning through her skin, that meant she probably didn't have long to look around if she wanted to get food _and_ get back home safely.

 _Head to the marketplace first._ Someone _has to have scraps._

So, Sunari dragged herself toward the buzzing chakra that she came to recognize as the marketplace, the gathering of civilians, goods, and trade where Michi got all the orphanage's necessities. From how active it was every single day and how lively Michi made it sound, she was expecting grandiose tabling set-ups, colorful foods from all over the world, and bustling bodies moving about in nonstop motion.

She entered the district, and was met with a… depressing sight.

The marketplace was nothing more than a constricted alleyway, lined by worn vendor booths on both sides. A few booths were shaded by beige canvas awnings, but most were left to bake under the sun. Oh, there were people too, alright. But if Sunari were to describe them, she would say they looked like slow-moving skeletons that had risen from a sandy grave. The vendors, the customers, _everyone_ in the Suna marketplace had a haggard look to their countenance, and while trade _was_ still happening, it was moving at a heavily sluggish pace.

What completed the finishing touch on this already decrepit landscape was the fact that in the vendor booths, the amount of supply was nowhere _near_ close to the amount of demand.

Sunari winced. If she thought she was the only one going hungry around here… well, she was just proven wrong.

Was she really so naïve to think that people here just had a bunch of food lying around that they'd give to starving orphans?

Her body shivered with the pangs of pins and needles slowly infiltrating her body, and she shook her head of any lingering thoughts.

She started walking through the marketplace ( _alleyway_ ), browsing through each of the stalls. A select few of the vendors, surprisingly, carried a decent amount of items for sale. For instance, one fellow originating from the Fire Country had a great supply of wooden utensils and trinkets.

But she was shocked to find that most of them had literally only one or two products to sell, and at _astonishingly_ high prices. Even the vendors selling food, the most important good on the market in Sunari's opinion, had only enough at their booths for a small family.

And _all_ of the walking dead civilians, who passed through the alleyway exhaustedly, left each booth almost as quickly as they approached them. Sunari overheard a number of conversations ( _failed attempts at bargains_ ) that made her want to cry.

No vendor had food. No customer had the money to buy food. There was simply _no_ economic circulation even _happening_. What the actual fuck?

Despondently, Sunari trudged onward, eventually walking into a circular quad that she assumed to be the central point of the marketplace. Most marketplace centers from her home world had _some_ kind of hubbub happening. She expected to see something similar.

But here in Suna… there was nothing. It was like the people were ghosts of themselves, lost and grasping for a reason to keep them tethered to this world.

She looked from one end of the circular quad to the other, standing on the edge of the alleyway she came from, and she grew even more uncertain of what to think, what to _do_.

She stood in shock, gaping at the rampant poverty and neglect that Suna's citizens were facing. What the hell was the Kazekage doing? Didn't anyone bother to inform him that his people were _dying_?

Making one last scan of the quad, she weaved her way into the scattered crowd. They were all most certainly civilians, like Michi.

Speaking of which, what the _hell_ was the woman talking about when she said the marketplace was one of her favorite places in Suna? Did she not _see_ what the circumstances were like here?

A yell interrupted her thoughts. "Get out, peasant! You can't enter this alleyway!"

At the opposite side of the quad from which she came, Sunari found a ninja ( _a real life ninja holy shit_ ) glaring down at an old man on the floor. The latter looked like he'd just been pushed or kicked down, and shifted into a begging position.

"Please shinobi-san… my family is starving… my children, my grandchildren… just one meal, just one morsel of food can help…"

The dark-haired ninja kicked him again into the center of the quad, this time in the gut. Sunari's stomach twisted in outrage.

"You don't think the rest of the village is starving too? If you _civvies_ are in such a state, imagine the shinobi, who risk their lives daily to keep you alive." The shinobi guard sneered and looked up at the crowd who watched the scene in horror. "Entrance to this side of the marketplace is _forbidden_ to non-shinobi. You all know the rules."

Enraged, Sunari turned her attention away for a second to peer at the alleyway in question. Her eyes bulged at what she saw.

Goods of all kinds littered the booths. Colorful awnings covered every single station, and both vendors and customers were _smiling_. She saw bills, copious amounts of bills, being passed back and forth.

Most prominent to her critical eye was the flash of the Suna hitai-ate tied onto the forehead of every single patron in the alley.

She gritted her teeth, fuming at the injustice she was watching unfold right before her very eyes.

The old man, persistent ( _desperate_ ), got to his knees and bowed in seiza. "I beg you. Please, I'll do anything."

The ninja sneered. "You want to know what you can do, _jiji_? You can tell your kids to stop having so many children, and stop sucking up the village's welfare. And while you're at it, roll over and die so they can be rid of another mouth to feed."

He spat on the man, and proclaimed to all witnesses, "This is a warning. The next time I find a civilian attempting to make off with even more _charity_ from our generous village, the punishment will be death." Then he turned to disappear into the shinobi marketplace.

The tension in the air dissipated, and the spectators resumed their business as though nothing had happened. Sunari noticed that they kept a safe distance from the old man, who still remained in his bowed position on the floor.

Sunari's fists clenched, to the point where she nearly drew blood. She just… she just stood there. She just stood while a ninja _abused_ an old man, who could have _died_. She just witnessed the equivalent of police brutality in the shinobi world, and she did nothing. _Nothing_.

Biting her lower lip in resentment, she rushed over the old man, gently placing her hands on his back and checking him for injuries.

"Sir, are you okay?"

Slowly ( _painfully_ ), the old man came up from his bow and gazed into Sunari's ebony eyes. Blood trickled from both sides of his cracked lips, his wrinkly skin dusted with sand. Upon seeing Sunari's concern, he smiled.

"Yes. Thank you… young one," he returned politely.

Sunari bit the inside of her cheek to stop the flow of tears that she knew would come. She _hated_ crying. They were useless for things like this, and they only served to make other people feel worse.

The grandfatherly figure swiped a thumb under her eye, wiping away a tear that had fallen without her knowledge. "Don't cry. It is not your concern, you have much to live for. It is better they attack me than someone like you…"

"But they hurt you!" Sunari protested bitterly. "Shinobi are supposed to protect you and keep you safe, and they hurt you!"

"Such is how it is, young one. The shinobi come before the civilians. You will learn, as you grow here in Suna, that some things are just not fair. They have their reasons for acting as such, and we can only hope they use their power wisely."

Tears were definitely falling now. Tears of sadness, anger, disappointment, disbelief.

 _How_ easy _it is for humans to fall into violence to reinforce their own power._

She closed her eyes, and breathed in a familiar pattern. Her thoughts were a muddled mess of feelings, and she needed to re-center herself. Right now, she didn't need to feel the anger consume her. She didn't need the emotions to control _her_. Right now, she needed to focus on what was important.

Her eyes calmly fluttered open, her composure restored and resolve strengthened.

"Jiji," she placed a hand on the old man's shoulder gently but steadfastly, "you wait right here. I'll come back with some food for your family."

The old man's eyes widened, and he grabbed her wrist as she turned away, "No! Did you not hear what that shinobi just said? He'll kill you!"

"Not if he can't catch me," she grinned. "Besides, if he tries anything, I'll just yell that he's a pervert and he'll stop."

"You…"

"Just hang out in the shade, okay jiji? It's hot today. I'll grab a whole bunch of stuff, so don't you worry!"

The old man looked down, and struggled to get to his feet. Sunari helped him up, and was given a warning of safety and a thank you of gratitude.

Then, she turned to the shinobi alleyway, facing her quest head on. The grin on her face faltered, as she came to a disheartening realization.

 _Now what?_

* * *

Sunari really didn't think this through. She thought she did, but her overconfidence and arrogance really clouded her judgment. How the _hell_ was she going to get in and out of a marketplace full of _trained ninja_ without anyone noticing? She didn't even know how to use her chakra!

Which, speaking of, was spiking again in tandem with her hunger and body heat. She could walk for a limited amount of time with her pain, but she could only go so far before it hindered her movement.

She mentally face-palmed, thinking herself to be a downright idiot for making a promise she wasn't sure she could keep. She also had no idea if the pervert name-calling idea would even work. Because really, if they were willing to beat the elderly, what stopped them from beating a kid?

Deciding not to let her indecision stall her any longer, she did what she thought would look most normal and just walked in. She grimaced preemptively, waiting for something to hit her or someone to stop her.

Nothing came. She just kept walking.

 _Wow. Infiltration success. These "shinobi" ain't shit._

She moved at a slighter quicker pace, scanning the booths for what would look like a decent meal and an unobservant vendor. Her heartbeat was racing.

She passed a yakitori stall, where there was a plentitude of skewers already available and more being cooked on the grill, the vendor's back turned to her.

She kept walking, marking that stall as her target and moving on to examine the rest of the selections, as though she were just a nonchalant passerby. When a reasonable amount of time had passed, she turned around and resumed pacing in the direction she came from. From a distance, she eyed the stall. The cook's back was still turned, as he was grilling up the next batch of chicken. If she was quick, she could be in and out of this wretched place and avoid detection.

 _Just get enough for the jiji's family and for yourself, then get out._ Her palms sweated, adrenaline being the only thing that kept her from succumbing to her chakra-induced pain.

Sunari casually moved closer to the stall, reaching her arm up to the table as though it were a completely normal thing to do. Making one last check from the corner of her eye, she swiped seven skewers and kept walking, gripping them tightly as though her life depended on it.

She managed to walk five stalls away before she heard a livid shout. "Hey! Who took my yakitori?!"

She started pacing faster, hoping to get away from the scene as quickly as possible.

"You there! Kid! Get back here!"

She heard footsteps racing toward her, so she dropped all pretenses and raced away as quickly as her little feet could take her.

"Thief!"

"Pervert!" she shouted in response. "There's a pervert chasing me!"

None of the faces she sprinted past even turned to acknowledge her.

 _Damn it! Unoriginal!_

She felt something tug on her ankle and recognized the feel of gossamer threads ( _Takuma's weapon of choice_ ) before she caught on them and tripped over. The skewers fell out of her hands and onto the sandy floor.

She tried to crawl away, but the chakra threads wrapped around both ankles and dragged her closer to their user. She turned to see the darkened face of the shinobi who threatened the civilian crowd earlier, bending over with hands on hips to sneer at her.

"Well, well, well, look what scum crawled in this time."

She spat in his menacing face. "How dare you beat an old man."

Then, her entire body froze as a current of malice, foreboding, evil, _murder_ washed over her. Her lungs were suffocating, like she was drowning, and her heart raced as though shocked by a defibrillator. Any of the usual pain she felt was negated by this overwhelming feeling of _imminent death_. The only thought she could even muster was that she should have just stayed at the orphanage and waited for dinner, because she was most certainly going to meet her second death here.

The ninja was _incensed_ , and he slapped her across the face. It stung, but she could hardly move to even touch it.

Then he whipped his hand over the other side of her face. She didn't move, peering at him from barely the corner of her eye.

He grabbed her by the front of her shirt, and lifted her up so that they met eye-to-eye.

"You think you're a smartass, kid? It's civilian brats like you who make our lives difficult, who we have to clean up after, who we _die for_! And you think it's fine for you to steal from us, after everything we do for you?!"

Sunari had no answer, because the Killing Intent (and his grip on her shirt) was _asphyxiating_ her.

"Well, no one's going to notice if you suddenly disappear."

Sunari's eyes widened as he pulled a kunai from his hip pouch. _This asshole is seriously going to kill me?!_

She voiced a soundless scream, feeling a miasmic sensation seep out of her body, and for a split second, she thought she saw the shinobi's eyes obscure with panic.

"Takahiro-san, please stop!"

Sunari peered behind the shinobi holding her captive to see a man with sandy blonde hair and violet eyes holding his hand up in a halting gesture, dark blue kimono top slightly ruffled. ( _W_ _here had she seen him before?_ ) Takahiro, as he was apparently called, dropped her suddenly and turned his attention entirely to the newcomer.

"Yashamaru-dono."

She choked violently, as a result of both her strangling and her disbelief. If it had been possible, Sunari's stomach would have coiled with even more dread. As it stood in her current situation, however, she was still petrified from the after-effects of the Killing Intent and prickled by her inner chronic chakra pain, so she merely stared, mouth slightly agape.

"Takahiro-san, I will pretend I did not see that kunai you were going to use toward a civilian _child_. I cannot, however, dismiss the Killing Intent you blatantly directed at her—"

 _This is actually a joke right? Of all the people to save me, it's the doting uncle of Gaara, the major canon character of Sunagakure?_

"—she is clearly starving! I understand we are in the middle of a recession, but there is no need to _murder_ —"

 _I'm in a sitcom. I must be in some twisted Naruto AU sitcom, because if Yashamaru's here, that means…_

"—she is nearly the same age as young Gaara-sama!"

He then gestured to a small boy with the brightest red hair Sunari had seen on a person's head, ever, in either of her lives. His eyes shone with a shy seafoam green, and he wore a poncho-like top over a dark short sleeve and black pants. He stood somewhat hidden behind Yashamaru, one hand clutching his uncle's pant leg, the other gripping a small teddy bear.

Sabaku no Gaara, in the flesh, staring at her with a worried gaze.

Staring. Directly. At. Her.

… _Fuck._

"Takahiro-san, I am very sorry. I truly am, but I must report this incident to the Kazekage—"

Slightly delirious from the lack of oxygen, Sunari's eyes widened and before she could think, she shouted, "No!"

All eyes turned to her.

She still found it hard to move, but she pushed through it and got to her feet because like _hell_ was Michi finding out she got caught stealing and had to get bailed out by the Kazekage's right hand man. Nope, not today Satan!

"A-ano… it's not that big a deal. Thank you very much, shinobi-san," Sunari bowed to Yashamaru, "but I… understand. I shouldn't have done what I did, and I am very sorry." She bowed again to Takahiro, who stood seething but pacified.

"I… I don't have the money to repay the cook for the yakitori… but I can find a way. I humbly apologize for my misconduct." She bowed deeply one final time, holding it for as long as it would take for her to get out of here ASAP Rocky.

Michi didn't raise no impolite tramp, after all.

"Stand, young one." Sunari rose shakily to Yashamaru's command. "You are very well-spoken, and humble indeed. Do not concern yourself with the finances. I will take care of it."

Yashamaru dismissed Takahiro with a final warning, who left with a Body Flicker ( _wow that's cool she should learn that one day_ ), a cloud of sand swirling where he formerly stood. Then, he walked to Sunari and checked her over.

"Are you okay?" At her nod, he continued apologetically, "I am so very sorry you had to experience that. Takahiro-san… he recently lost a brother on a mission. He is… not taking the loss well."

 _Clearly._

"My name is Yashamaru. Allow me to handle everything with the yakitori vendor, okay? You won't have to worry about anything."

"Ahh, but—"

"No buts. Consider this an apology on behalf of Sunagakure. Now, you had…" —he looked over at the sorry mess of skewers she left on the floor behind her— "about… seven… skewers?"

Still feeling jittery from the adrenaline rush of the near-death encounter and on edge from Gaara's presence _five feet away from her_ , she rasped, "I… I wanted to get some for a jiji and his family. And me," she added truthfully. Considering her next words carefully, she continued, "He tried to earlier, but... the other shinobi-san said no. So... I wanted to try."

"… I see. Well, wait right here. I'll be back in just a bit, and we can share with that family, ne?" he promised with a soft voice, patting her head quietly.

And then he left her standing there in the middle of the street, shinobi passersby staring horrified in her direction.

She shifted her feet uneasily, uncertain of how to act because she was basically a lucky delinquent who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Then she felt the brush of a light desert breeze on her chakra sense, and heard someone clear their throat. She looked up to meet the concerned eyes of Gaara ( _who looked almost like he was_ afraid _?_ ), and she flinched.

"Are you… are you okay?"

She didn't realize she was holding her breath after his inquiry until she started seeing stars, and promptly released it to nod in affirmation to answer Gaara's question.

He looked relieved at her answer, and replied, "Oh phew! Tha' shinobi was so… so _mean_!"

Sunari's face dropped to a shocked expression, unbelieving of the words she heard spilling from his mouth. Then her eyes veered to his bare forehead, and she resumed an unknowing smile, remembering that he was still a sweet, innocent little boy at this point in time.

 _And hadn't he always been?_

Recalling that she was supposed to be a child talking to another child (and not a grown woman talking to a boy with a _tailed beast inside him_ ), she tried to bare the smile while responding, "'Ts… 'ts'not his fault. He was jus'… really sad. An' I think… it made 'em feel better, t'do that."

"Buh he tried t' hurt you!"

She recognized a parallel in Gaara's accusation to her own when the jiji was victimized by Takahiro, and smiled weakly.

 _So that's how it is…_

She rubbed the back of her head sheepishly, and admitted, somewhat candidly, "Well, ya... But I forgave 'em. So maybe he won' do it again!"

Well, maybe she didn't forgive him _yet_. But she'd be lying if she said she didn't see where his rage was coming from. Hard to miss, seeing as how it was a pretty standard story in this world. Not that that made it okay.

Then, of all things Gaara _pouted_ , and crossed his arms in frustration.

Sunari was still scared shitless being around him, but she thought he looked just a tad less terrifying with that mopey expression on his face.

And... she couldn't explain it, but she felt a _minute_ sense of serenity standing next to the crimson-haired boy. As illogical as that sounded, it felt like something in him resonated with something in her, and the reassuring rhythm of those somethings echoing off each other kept her fears at bay.

Her contemplations were broken off by Yashamaru's return, and she consequently gawked at the _seven bento boxes_ that he carried in his hands.

"Y-Yashamaru-san…" she stammered in incredulity.

He beamed. "This is nothing. Now, let's go find that man, and then I'll fix up your face, okay?"

She rubbed her cheeks to find that, indeed, they were sore and probably bruised from the hits. That man, Takahiro or whatever shit, _had_ to have used chakra or something because her face stung like no other.

Or maybe that was just her hypersensitivity being a bitch.

"T-thank you, Yashamaru-san," she bowed, fully meaning it. "You, you didn't have to…"

"Nonsense," he waved off as the three started walking toward the quad, "And what is your name, by the way?"

"Sunari, sir."

She felt a slight pause in his chakra, though his body betrayed no such change.

"…Sunari, you say?" he asked slowly, handing her one of the bentos.

She nodded distractedly, focusing more of her attention on the contents of the bento. She salivated with craving, ready to devour everything inside, but upon recognizing a particular item in the container she reluctantly decided to bring it home to the orphanage instead.

So concentrated was she on the bento that she missed Yashamaru's apprising gaze. Instead, she looked up to meet a warm mien painted over his expression. "…Well Sunari-chan, it's good to meet you. Have you met young Gaara here?"

The man gestured to his nephew on the other side of him, who blushed and turned his head away, finding the ground suddenly more interesting.

"Mm. He's super nice!"

She heard a slight gasp and shuffling from the other side of Yashamaru's legs.

Yashamaru laughed. "He certainly is…"

* * *

At the quad, Sunari quickly located the old man and ran to him, checking over him and asking him if he was okay. He was glad to see that she was safe and alive, and responded wholeheartedly in good mirth, thanking her sincerely for doing her best to help.

"About that…" she gestured to Yashamaru behind her, who handed the old man six of the seven bentos he had acquired earlier in the shinobi alley.

The old man's eyes bulged, and he quickly entered a deep bow on his knees. "Yashamaru-sama!"

 _Oh fuck was I supposed to call him sama? Is he technically sama? Why do these honorifics matter so much? Wait, I'm not even supposed to know who he is. Wait, then do I have to pretend to act flustered about not calling him sama? Wait, but I_ am _flustered!_

The younger man waved his elder off, in a similar fashion to his earlier gesture to Sunari. "Jiji-san, I am honored to provide for you and your family. I apologize for all the inconveniences the shinobi here have caused, and I hope that there will be no… repeat encounters."

 _So he did see what happened... and did nothing._

"Thank you… thank you. Bless you, Yashamaru-sama." He looked up to meet my eyes with a deep gaze. "And thank you too, young one. You have a strong heart, and I am certain it will lead you down a great path."

She blushed at his honest words, thanking him with equal conviction.

The old man got up to leave, and with his departure Yashamaru prodded Sunari and Gaara to enter a separate alleyway exiting from the quad, one that didn't lead to either civilian or shinobi marketplace.

Sunari looked back at the quad with uncertainty settling in her gut, but didn't stop walking.

* * *

Yashamaru took the pair of children through what seemed like an endless maze of twists and turns, until finally they approached a small park. There wasn't any grass like in the parks of her old world, but the sand looked softer and the air felt calmer.

Yashamaru sat the two children down on the bench, along with the bento, and kneeled in front of Sunari to examine her.

"Sunari-chan, I'm a iryo-nin, so you can trust me to heal you. I'm going to use a diagnostic jutsu to see what the damage is, and then from there I will heal it. It doesn't look like you have much more than cuts and bruises though, so it won't take too long. Okay?"

Well, it wasn't like she could say _no_.

"Mm. Thank you, Yashamaru- _sama_!" she chirped, correcting for her previous indiscretion.

Yashamaru chuckled, "San is just fine. Sama is usually used by civilians, and even then I prefer not to have such a formal honorific!" Then, his gaze turned slightly distant, and he stated rather than questioned, "But you're not a civilian, are you."

Sunari blinked, and very carefully did not react.

He brought his hand up to her face with a smile, and it glowed green. His chakra felt like a murmuring heartbeat, one with love resonating in every pulse.

He placed his hand over her cheek, and she could have sworn his chakra paused again, with slightly more confusion than before.

"Is something wrong, Yashamaru-san?"

He smiled, and Sunari couldn't help but be reminded of her orphanage mother.

"Nothing at all, Sunari-chan. Just as I thought, nothing more than cuts and bruises. I'll heal you now."

"Yay, thas' great Sunari-san! You're awesome, Yashamaru!" Gaara chimed in from beside Sunari.

Yashamaru hummed with mirth, and placed his chakra over Sunari's cheek. The feeling was… not as comforting as she expected.

On one hand, it felt pretty soothing to be healed by the magic stuff. Like wow medical treatment from her old world had a ways to go if _this_ was the norm here. In seconds, she could literally feel her cells rejuvenating and restoring, as though she'd woken up from a particular good night's worth of sleep.

But on the other hand, he was introducing his _foreign_ chakra into her hypersensitive system. Meaning, although her physical body _was_ healing through his iryo-ninjutsu, it was rejecting his chakra at the same time, which caused some slight stinging.

Altogether, it just left her feeling numb, like she lost sensation in the parts of her body that he healed. Like... like he didn't just take away the pain, he also took away the relief.

It was odd. But who was she to question the biology of this world?

Yashamaru retreated his hand, and Sunari beamed at him with all the gratitude she could muster. She thanked him repeatedly, which he accepted.

She turned her head to look at Gaara, and uttered, "Well, I wonder how Gaara is—"

She froze.

The redhead was _sleeping_.

Every muscle in her body tensed, and she put all of her energy into not screaming her head off because _oh my dear god Shukaku is going to come out I'm not ready to die why am I always thrown in these life-death situations ahhhhhh—_

"…Sunari-chan?"

— _oh, I'm not supposed to know that, huh?_

She gently brought her head back to face Yashamaru, with an extremely delicate smile on her face.

And by delicate, she meant grinning like an over-caffeinated three-year-old taking an elementary school picture, baby teeth exposed and eyes expanded like headlights.

"Yashamaru-san… should Gaara-san be sleeping like that?" she whispered.

Yashamaru's face was unreadable. "… Well, he _has_ had some trouble sleeping recently… so I'm actually quite glad he is able to do so now. Surprised, in fact."

She turned again to observe the boy, but not before missing the narrowing of Yashamaru's eyes.

 _Act normal! Act normal! Stop dropping bombs of canon knowledge now!_

"Oh, has he now? It's good… he is… getting some rest now…" She added on quickly, "I've actually been having a hard time sleeping too! Yeah, it's probably super normal for our age!"

If it was possible, Yashamaru's eyes narrowed even further.

 _Gah! Just shut up, shut your trap before you make things wor—_

 **BahaahAHhaHHAhahahhAHahAHa!**

She gasped, spinning her head around in alarm to glare behind her. Her eyes scanned the children's sandbox for the source of the frenetic voice, but found there was nothing ( _no one_ ) in sight.

"Sunari-chan?"

"Did you hear that voice, Yashamaru-san?" she asked sharply.

He paused, looking confused. "No… did you hear something?"

 **He's asleep he's asleep! The little boy's asleep and I get to come out and pLaY!**

She rotated her whole body this time, searching feverishly for the sound.

 **But maybe since** _ **you're**_ **the one who's awake now… I'll play with you first!**

"What the fuck, man?!" Sunari shouted at the voice she couldn't see.

"Sunari-chan!" Yashamaru scolded, no doubt reproaching her for her foul language.

"Yashamaru-san," she hissed, turning back to him briefly, "There's someone screaming at us right now, and he's being super creepy!" she claimed, in somewhat of a panicked voice.

 _Like, pedophile-level creepy!_

 **I'm not a pedophile!**

She gripped the sides of her head with both hands.

 _You're in my head?!_

 **Ehehehehe… you _are_ more fun after all… **

Sunari started to hyperventilate. Because, well, it seemed that apparently, at some point over the past three years she had developed schizophrenia.

"Sunari!" Yashamaru clutched her shoulders sharply, causing her to come out of her head and back to reality. "I promise that there is no one else here but you, me, and Gaara-sama."

She brought herself to a reasonable smile, and composed herself. _There's a time and place for everything, Sunari. And right now is_ not _the time to let a powerful ANBU shinobi know that you have a voice in your head. A creepy one._

 **I take offense to being called creepy! Ehehehe…**

 _A creepy one that is also conversational, apparently._

"You're right, Yashamaru-san. I think I'm still tired from earlier. I'm just being silly! Sorry to worry you," she reassured.

Yashamaru gave her a saccharine smile, and merely said, "Of course, Sunari-chan. Perhaps it's best for you to rest as well. Shall I escort you home?"

"Oh no no no!" she raised her hands in protest, "I can't take you away from Gaara-san… 'specially since it's so hard for him to sleep! I'll find my way home, don't worry!"

Then she channeled her inner… Maito Gai… and gave him a thumbs up, hoping her teeth would give that trademark sparkle.

 _There is no way I'm giving Michi a chance to hear about this. I'm in too deep, and I need to get out._

"Are you sure, Sunari-chan? Where's your ho—?"

"Ahh you know what? I've really got to get going!" She got up from the bench and bowed deeply to Yashamaru, who was still kneeling on the floor. "I'm gonna get in trouble if I'm out too late! Thank you for the bento and saving my life and everything, I will repay you for sure!"

Before he could respond, she started running out of the park, shaking that odd voice out of her head and the fear from her heart.

* * *

Safely out of the way of danger, Sunari slowed her pace and stopped entirely to catch her breath. Nearly dying by kunai, meeting Gaara and Yashamaru, and sitting next to a _sleeping host of Shukaku_ was _not_ something she expected breaking out of the house for the first time.

Also, what the hell was that voice in her head?

Her mind was eerily quiet, as though it had just been her occupying it the whole time. She was waiting for the other voice to make some unsettling comment, but none came. She supposed the auditory hallucinations came and went as they pleased, shrugging it off and temporarily filing it away for later examination.

Having determined her mind to be at a more stable state, she looked around her surroundings, and face-palmed.

She was completely lost.

The only recognizable thing she could see was the wall surrounding the village. The history texts she once read said it was a strong defensive fortification built in Suna's early days, as it protected the village from all sides and had only one entrance.

An entrance that… Michi said the orphanage was close to.

 _Hm._

If the wall supposedly wrapped around the entire village in a circular fashion, then she'd _have_ to hit the village entrance eventually if she walked around the wall's circumference, right? And if she found the entrance, she could find the orphanage.

 _Bingo._

The only problem was… she was _exhausted_. Now that she had a chance to really pause and stop worrying about all the problems that decided to show up that day, she was finally registering the sensations around her.

And that... wasn't really a good thing either. The heat was still oppressively burning every inch of her body on the outside, and the pins and needles spiking her on the inside started to scream all over.

She took several minutes just to _breathe_ and recuperate from her sudden spurt of physical action. She looked up at the sun and realized it was starting to get low. She really had to get going soon.

She'd be _so_ lucky if no one figured out she was missing yet—maybe Michi wouldn't lecture her ass after all.

But judging by the position of the sun… she'd been gone for at least four hours by now. The orphans wouldn't give a shit; they'd be _enraptured_ that she was out of the house. The caretakers probably wouldn't have noticed either.

But, there was still Takuma. The little puppeteer-in-training who always seemed to be watching her, and "testing" ( _attacking_ ) her when she least expected it. He would _absolutely_ notice her absence, even if he _had_ been napping at the time she left.

And he would most certainly inform Michi of Sunari's escapades. There was no doubt about that.

"There's no lying my way out of this one," the girl sighed.

Feeling slightly more rejuvenated, though still stiff, she made her way to the main road, continuing onward in the direction of the village boundaries until she came face-to-face with a high wall that looked like a naturally eroded mountain range. Staring upward, she couldn't help but voice her amazement at the beauty of the formation.

It was definitely man made, that was certain enough—possibly by a number of shinobi putting up some strong Earth Release walls. Yet at the same time, it seemed that over time, sand erosion softened the edges enough to make the whole cliff formation look like it was made by nature itself.

The walls themselves were essentially huge sandstone cliffs towering over the village, leaving the latter in something like an enclosed valley. Huge rocks, the size of a minivan in her old world, lined one of the cliff's plateaus, which she supposed served some purpose or other. (The Kazekage was probably not the kind of man who was interested in the impractical.)

There wasn't anyone patrolling the wall; in fact, there were no signs of life at all surrounding the border.

 _Isn't that… bad for security? Or do they only patrol the outside?_

Regardless, Sunari was on her own for this one. And if she had to choose between two directions, she'd have to pick the one that was _right_ , didn't she?

 _My puns will get me into a buttload of trouble one day, I swear._

Little did she know, that day was today.

* * *

An hour and a half later, the sun had set far enough that the heat wasn't frying her like an egg anymore, but the light it provided had dimmed to the point where Sunari needed to feel along the wall to get her sense of direction. A layer of sweat still plastered all over her body, clinging to her clothes and hair uncomfortably, and her hunger pangs remained on the rise.

Worst of all were the burgeoning pains of chakra skewering her insides. She'd had to stop every few minutes after a certain point because she just _couldn't_ continue otherwise without stumbling over her own two feet.

At this rate, she would have to camp somewhere for the night. She couldn't keep walking like this, no way. Otherwise, she'd find herself to be a meal for the vultures in the morning.

Losing all sense of self-preservation, she collapsed, bento still in hand.

 _Just a quick nap… and I'll get back up soon._

Her eyes drifted closed as she felt herself falling in and out of consciousness.

* * *

"Hey, hey kid!" a voice shouted in the distance, steadily approaching. "Kid, you alright?"

Sunari jolted awake, freezing all movement. The sun had fallen entirely, shrouding her in complete darkness. She must have been asleep for some time, because her pains had receded slightly and surprisingly so had her hunger. Replacing them instead was adrenaline ( _or was it chakra, she could never tell_ ), flushing her veins.

The voice was about ten feet away, and from it she sensed a vibrant chakra like that of a faithful dog, with the smallest, barely detectable twinge of malice.

She wasn't sure if this was a friend or foe, and given that it was fully nighttime now and she was a _three-year-old girl_ , she needed to calculate all possible escape routes in case she needed to get the fuck away. Maybe if she just played dead, he'd leave.

She laid unmoving, for what felt like eternity but was realistically only a few minutes.

A finger poked her. "Hey, you're not dead are you?" The voice, which sounded like it belonged to a teenage boy going through puberty, placed a hand on one of her shoulders and tried to flip her over to face him.

The toddler responded by launching her fist at the teenager's face, but he caught it easily with one hand and laughed airily.

"Little girl, someone taught you well. Don't worry, I'm not a bad guy, I—"

"That's what all bad guys say," Sunari interrupted bluntly.

But the teenager just chuckled again, this time releasing her from his hold and backing up to give her space, still kneeling on the ground. Then, his hand glowed in the darkness to reveal the face of a young male with choppy black-blue hair, dark mischievous eyes, L-shaped metal face-guards covering both his cheeks connected by a black strap over his nose, and a laughable excuse of a teenage goatee lining his chin.

But what set Sunari on edge was the Sunagakure symbol etched into his hitai-ate.

She stilled, and slowly started to back away on her hands.

"Hey… I'm serious, I'm really not a bad guy. You don't have to worry," he ensured with a hearty grin.

Five hours ago, she probably would have believed him. But after that _disastrous_ incident with Takahiro, well, forgive her for wanting to ensure her survival.

"Shinobi are… shinobi are mean," she whispered.

"Haaaa?" the teenage shinobi sounded in disbelief, "That's not true!"

She withdrew further, holding her hands up in front of her.

"Ah okay, okay… I know, we can be a little scary sometimes. But I promise you, if I'm a bad guy you can punch me all you want," the teenage shinobi grinned.

"But first things first, allow me to introduce myself. Sunagakure no Yuura, at your service," he ended with a flourish of the hands.

"Yuura…" Sunari muttered to herself. Why did that name sound so familiar?

"Yep, you got it. I'm a chuunin, assigned to village guard duty! I was walking and—"

 _Ohhh… oh_ nooo _…_

"—just making my rounds when I thought I spotted someone on the ground, and looking more closely I saw it was you. What's your name, little missy?"

 _The future Suna council member who was mind-fucked by Sasori and/or Orochimaru, turned into a bad Itachi cosplayer, and inevitably got Gaara killed,_ this _fucker was Yuura?_

"Hellooooo, I'm talking to you! Little girl!" Yuura waved his hands in front of her face.

Sunari flinched, and narrowed her eyes. She didn't remember much of what happened in Suna, but wasn't Yuura some serious ass jounin who took out the entire village guard platoon that he had assembled himself? _This_ little shit was just a teenager, and an obnoxious one at that!

Oh right, time skip.

 _I guess a lot could change in a decade._

"C'mon, can't you tell me your name? I promise I'll help you find your way home," he nagged playfully, whining out the last word in a singsong voice.

But still, at this point, Sasori _had_ to have put that mind-washing seal or whatever into his brain. He did it when he left the village, and that was a while ago, right?

 _Gahhh what happened to avoiding canon?_

"Hey," he stated firmly, placing both hands on her shoulders and gaining her full attention. "Enough messing around. It's getting really late, and your parents must be worried sick. Can you please tell me your name and where you live? I'll take you back to our village check-in station, and we'll find someone to take you home."

Sunari shifted uncomfortably, still untrusting of this _shinobi_ and unwilling to divulge such personal information. "You… you can take me to the village entrance. I'll find my way home from there."

"Heh? Okay, well, we'll see about that… and your name, little missy?"

Sunari remained silent.

Yuura hmphed. "Well, fine, if you don't want to tell me your name, that's fine… I'll just call you Tanuki Neiri! Because it's like you were a sneaky possum trying to trick me into thinking you were dead!"

"…"

"…"

… _Does Sasori's seal make people batshit weird too?_

Yuura's grin fell to a reasonable curve. "Well Tanuki-chan, let's get going! Don't want to keep your parents waiting~"

Then, before she could protest he hefted her up and carried her on his back, running at a slight pace. Clinging onto his throat (and the bento) for dear life, all she could do was wait.

* * *

Soon enough, Sunari saw lights in the distance, illuminating a sandstone kiosk about ten feet high, boxed on all sides except for the front window. Inside was a counter that presumably enabled ninja to interact with all incoming entrants. The Suna symbol, as with most things in the village, was engraved on the outer face of the counter.

A man standing in the booth, with a large muscular frame (and earthy-feeling chakra) donning the standard Suna uniform, gave a confused expression upon seeing the teenager running toward the booth.

"Ehh, Yuura? You're back already?" the man tilted his head to look behind Yuura, "Who's that with you?"

"Yo, Takeshi! Yeah, just started my rounds when I found a lost little bird along the way," Yuura responded, gesturing to Sunari with a thumb.

Sunari remained silent, examining the dark-eyed newcomer with wariness.

"Ohhh," he put on a play voice that Sunari recognized adults used for children, "what's your name, sweetheart?"

"..."

Yuura rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, then moved to put the toddler in question down. Sunari noticed a number of blisters and recovering cuts on his knuckles.

"She doesn't take well to strangers," he explained. "I've been calling her Tanuki Neiri, or Tanuki-chan for now!"

Takeshi guffawed. "A playing possum, eh? And she took well to _you_?"

"No," Sunari deadpanned.

The older shinobi bellowed even more loudly. "You've got good senses, sweetie." He returned to his normal voice, and turned to Yuura, "I'll take her from here. Continue your rounds, and make sure to check the walls for disturbances."

 _Disturbances? That's interesting._

Playing the part of a timid three-year-old who _totally_ wasn't information gathering, Sunari looked the other man with fearful eyes. "D-disturbances?"

Takeshi looked back to Sunari, and his eyes broadened as he breathed in, realizing how his words might sound to a child. He held his hands in front of him, shaking them back and forth, "Oh, no, n-nothing scary! We just want to make sure no bad guys can break through our walls."

He pumped a fist in the air, then beat it on his chest. "Sunagakure is a strong, safe village, and we won't let anyone harm you!"

 _They seem… harmless enough. But it's a shame they're also smart enough to not share sensitive security information with a kid._

Feeling comfortable enough to drop her guard, Sunari decided to mess with the chumps. She stuttered out, "B-bad guys like, like Yuura-san?"

His distress visibly disappeared, amusement filling in its place. Yuura looked betrayed. Takeshi laughed heartily. "Ah, little girl. Yuura-san here," he gestured to the teenager in question, "is a horrible guard."

"Hey!"

"He shirks his rounds sometimes, he talks too much to the shinobi who walk through, and his taijutsu has _poor_ form."

"Takeshi-san!" Yuura whined.

"But," he whispered, "Yuura-san is not a bad guy."

Sunari nodded hesitantly.

"See this hitai-ate?" he pointed to his headband.

Sunari nodded again.

"The symbol here, of the gourd with the lid, represents our village, Sunagakure. Understand? Anyone wearing this symbol is a good guy.

" _But_ , if you ever see a headband with a different symbol, like a swirly leaf, a set of misty squiggles, a bubbly cloud, or a jagged rock, you are looking at a bad guy. A _very_ bad guy. And you ought to find someone with the Suna headband straight away. Got it, sweetheart?"

Sunari thought that was ironic since one of their own _assaulted_ her earlier in the day, but she dipped her head in affirmation anyway.

"Good," he smiled, "Now come over here so I can help you find your way home."

She turned her head to look to said ninja, and backed away slowly, whispering hesitantly, "I live close to here… I can go home by myself…"

Yuura moved to block her, standing behind her firmly. "I'm afraid we can't allow that, Tanuki-chan. It's dangerous at night, and your parents would murder me if they found out I let you walk home alone!"

Sunari was still uncomfortable, but it wasn't like she could say no to two chuunin-level ninja. Plus, her body was aching with hunger and prickly pins. She gave in and walked to the booth, where Yuura lifted her up to sit on the counter.

"Good girl," Takeshi smiled, "You'd make a good kunoichi, you know?"

She gave the smile that she always saw Michi-sama make when she was hiding something, responding, "Mm!"

 _Like hell I'm signing up to be a kunoichi. I'll pick up the cool ninja stuff_ without _conscripting myself to a lifetime of forced military service, thank you very much._

"Now, just hang out here for a second while I talk to Yuura-san for a little bit okay?"

"Okay."

He gave a grin, and turned to walk back to the teenager. "Now Yuura, like I said, look out for anything odd along the cliffs. Iwa's been pushing closer to our borders lately, and…"

Sunari placed her bento aside, and took a closer look around the check-in station, crawling to the edge facing inward of the booth. Aside from the expected clipboards and paperwork, she was startled to find rows upon rows of kunai and shuriken hanging hidden along the counter's inner surface. She supposed that was convenient in case of invasion or something, but it was a little much for her to see after a day of surprises.

She picked a kunai out and inspected it closely. It looked brand new, glimmering in the light of the station lamp. She squinted at her face reflected in its glint.

Dirty, grubby, sandy. Her hair was covered with grains and matted down with sweat. Even though Yashamaru managed to heal up her external and internal wounds, there was still some dried blood crusted across her face.

She frowned. _I'm in_ so _much trouble._

Then, she examined the kunai's edges. It was razor sharp, likely just polished. She wasn't sure exactly what led her to her next action, but she felt compelled to feel her thumb along the edge, which led to her cutting her thumb unintentionally and drawing more blood.

The sharpness of the incision didn't escape her pain receptors, but for some reason she felt more mesmerized by the scarlet shine of the viscous liquid, illuminated by the light of the full moon. In fact, she was almost… captivated by the sight of her…

 _ **Blood…**_

"Oi Tanuki-chan, put that down! That's not a toy!"

She snapped out of her daze, seeing an alarmed Yuura march toward her. He took the kunai out of her hands and placed it on the counter beside her.

"S-sorry…"

Yuura let out an exasperated but fond sigh. "Too eager to get into the shinobi profession, huh? Well, it's not your fault, you didn't know." He picked up the kunai, holding it a safe distance away from the girl.

"This knife is called a kunai, ne? Shinobi use it as a weapon, and while _we_ can handle it safely, children your age should be very, _very_ careful around it. Got it?"

"O-okay…"

 _What… just happened?_

Takeshi approached the counter to face Yuura. "That's enough playing around, Yuura." He then turned to Sunari on the counter and asked, "Young one, it's time to go home. I know you're tired, but please help us out so we can help you. Where is home? Who are your parents?"

"I don't…" Sunari turned downcast, ignoring the latter question. "… Home is the orphanage called Mirai no Saryu. I told Yuura-san, it's super close by."

Takeshi's eyes lit up with surprise. "Mirai no… isn't that Michi-san's place?"

 _Heh? How did these_ shinobi _know Michi?_

"I think so… she's out on a mission though isn't she?"

 _Mission?!_

"Ah, speak of the devil herself! Michi-saaaan!" Yuura yelled with excitement and waved.

"Yo, Michi-san! You're back already!" Takeshi rumbled.

Sunari _felt_ the warm chakra of the woman before seeing Michi herself walk through the narrow cliffs of the village entrance, looking nearly as battered and dust-covered as her orphan daughter.

In what looked like _ninja_ clothes, _ninja_ shoes, _ninja_ turban, and _ninja_ flak jacket.

The only thing missing to complete the image was the glint of metal that Sunari definitely noticed was hidden quickly behind Michi's back upon her entrance.

"We have something of yours, Michi-san," Takeshi said as the woman approached, "and I take it Kiri was dismal as alw—"

"Sunari-chan, what are you doing here?" Michi cut in.

 _Kiri…?_

Yuura's eyes widened in revelation and narrowed mischievously, "So that's your name, little birdy!"

He turned the girl so that she was facing forward, legs dangling over the front of the counter. "I found _Sunari_ taking a nap in the southeast sector, right by the wall. We were actually just about to take her back to your place, Michi-san."

Michi waved it off, reaching her arms out to carry Sunari to the floor. "No need, Yuura-san, Takeshi-san. Thank you for looking after my ward."

The teenager saluted. "Of course, Michi-san!" He then crouched so that he was eye-level with Sunari, and patted her head warmly.

"I hope to see you again, Tanuki-chan," he grinned. Sunari's stomach chose right then to growl, _loudly_.

Yuura laughed, patting her belly and swiping some dirt from her cheek. He handed her the bento from the counter. "But maybe under better circumstances?"

"Okay, Yuura-san," Sunari acquiesced absentmindedly, her mind focused on processing the latest information on her orphanage mother's second occupation.

"Oi, Yuura! Fun's over now, get back to your patrol!" Takeshi commanded.

The teenager jolted straight up, and started dashing away. "Yes sir! Ja ne, Sunari-chan, Michi-san!"

Michi took Sunari's hand and bowed to Takeshi. "Thank you again." The man nodded in acknowledgement as the pair started walking away.

As Sunari took each step, her mind started racing a million miles an hour, with thoughts like _holy fuck is Michi a ninja_ and _why didn't she tell us the truth_ and most importantly, _I'm in so so so so much trouble_.

"Sunari-chan."

Sunari tensed, looking up slowly at her orphanage mother.

Michi met her lavender eyes with Sunari's black, and spotting her pale countenance, simply sighed in exasperation. "You're going to be trouble in the future, aren't you, little minashigo?"

Sunari remained silent, suddenly extremely interested in the path straight in front of her.

* * *

Like Sunari hypothesized, the orphanage wasn't that far from the entrance. They returned home within minutes, and stopped at the front door while Michi looked for her keys in her pocket.

"Michi-sama," the woman turned to look at Sunari, who was looking down at the floor, "your… _nii-san_ is safe, right?"

Looking slightly puzzled, Michi replied, "…Yes. _He_ is a little tired, but otherwise safe."

"Because… Michi-sama has been going out a lot to take care of her… _nii-san_. But sometimes, _brothers_ can be nasty and scary. So… I just hope Michi-sama is being careful when she goes to take care of her… _nii-san_."

At this, Michi smiled, and knelt down to face Sunari. She placed both her hands on the girl's shoulders, and beamed, "My smart little girl. You have nothing to worry about, Sunari-chan…"

Then, she put on something like a vicious grin that threw Sunari for a loop. "…I am _very good_ at taking care of my _nii-san_."

She then stood to put the key in the lock, and pushed open the door to their home. Sunari followed, still slightly disturbed by Michi's facial expression.

Aaaand Takuma was standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed and irritation blatant on his face.

Sunari rubbed the back of her head sheepishly, and rushed quickly past him to the kitchen. Michi stopped the girl's flight with her arm.

"I'll cook you some dinner dear, so please wait on the couch."

"Yes, Michi-sama," she assented.

As she walked toward the couch in question, Takuma grabbed her by the arm and spun her, whispering dangerously, "Where did you go earlier?"

Which… was the equivalent of him expressing his _infuriation_. God damn it, was she never going to catch a break today?

Sunari, still holding the bento from earlier, shoved it in his arms and reluctantly muttered, "For you. Now leave me alone."

"A bento?" Takuma grumbled, letting her go and opening the box. "If you think this makes up for anything, you're—"

His eyes widened, and he gawked at Sunari.

She purposefully avoided his gaze, tilting her chin upward and waving him away. When she was finally alone, she let herself sink into the couch with all the exhaustion pouring over her body, drifting slowly into the embrace of sleep.

Today was, quite simply, a disaster. How the hell Sunari ended up meeting not one, not two, but _three_ canon characters in one afternoon, she will never understand.

That whole thing with Gaara too… well honestly, she was just _lucky_ to get away with her body intact and functional. Her mind held conflicting sentiments toward the redheaded boy, because each time she looked at him she saw overlapping images of him murdering his uncle and him leading the Allied Shinobi Forces.

She _knew_ he was going to be great, she _knew_ he was going to love the village with all his heart, but… her survival instinct couldn't let her forget that _he_ wasn't the one in control before the age of twelve— _Shukaku_ was.

It was pleasant enough to be around him, though. He was kind, polite, and showed genuine concern for the well-being of others. If she thought about it, the more time she spent with him, the more at peace she felt with her chakra-ravaged body.

 _I guess my chakra sense just has an intuition that caught up with my foreknowledge, ne?_

And fucking _Yuura_ of the Suna Council? That baka must have hit puberty hard or something in canon, because the only thing that resembled the Yuura in her memories was his appearance. Even then, he was cutting it pretty close with his childish goatee.

 _Well, it's not like I'll ever see those two again. Meeting canon characters once doesn't do anything to the plot... right?_

There was still the whole issue with Michi, though. There was no doubt in Sunari's mind now that her orphanage mother had a side job as a kunoichi, maybe even as a badass one if she took a quick trip to Kiri and made it back in one piece. Or was the orphanage the side job? Either way, Michi was definitely hiding this half of her life from her.

It all made sense now, why she knew so much about shinobi things, why she was always so secretive, and why her favorite place in the village was the marketplace - because she shopped at the marketplace for _ninja_.

Well, at least Sunari didn't have to rely on just Takuma anymore to teach her cool ninja magic. She was a little hurt about being lied to, but she understood well enough why Michi had to do it.

 _Well, today was just… once in a blue moon. The most important thing is, I got away with sneaking out of the house._

Then, as if hearing Sunari's thoughts, Michi poked her head out of the kitchen doorway. "Oh, and Sunari-chan?"

The girl looked up, shaken awake.

Michi smiled brightly. "Don't think we aren't going to talk about you sneaking out today."

 _Ah, shit._

* * *

 **A/N:** Silly Sunari... you met _four_ canon characters, not three. Anyway, that's a wrap! Boy this chapter went through _so_ many versions and revisions...

First, thanks to everyone who's been keeping up with the story - reviewers, favoriters, followers, lurkers, y'all are fantastic. I hope the story has been enjoyable so far! This chapter is way longer than all my other ones... but hopefully I have added enough plot to keep all the world-building from boring you to death!

Second, I have received some comments regarding Sunari's age toward the beginning of the story, and I've decided to revise previous chapters to make her age more realistic. I know it's a horrible faux pas and I'm literally only 9 chapters in... but I just feel ridiculous for making such a mistake and I want to keep the story as reasonable as possible. I apologize for being trash with planning/timeline. The changes shouldn't affect the story as it currently stands (i.e., you won't have to reread old chapters), and I will concurrently write new chapters while revising old ones. Thank you to the reviewers who brought it up, I wouldn't have recognized it without your insight.

Third, if you're wondering about OOC Yuura... well, let's just say I have plans for him.

Note: "Tanuki neiri" is a Japanese idiom equivalent to "playing possum" or playing dead. It also happens to be the name of the jutsu Gaara uses to give full control to Shukaku.

Thanks again for reading! Next chapter - Sunari (finally) starts basic shinobi training! We meet more canon characters! Yuura reveals his serious side! Stay tuned.


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